


An Adrestian Tail

by AMX004_Qubeley



Series: The Mice-Adventures of Mousegard [1]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Animal Transformation, Canon-Typical Violence, Cuddling & Snuggling, F/F, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Cindered Shadows DLC Spoilers, Fluff and Angst, Mystery, Romance, Spoilers, Talking Animals, can a mouse transformation potion lead to the end of the world? let's find out!, edelgard's poison, enjoy my 300k word thesis on berniegard and why it is a good ship, lots of redwall references, oh right the poison, sometimes the best way to open up emotionally is to be turned into something tiny and fuzzy, that poison, the poison chosen specifically to kill edelgard, the poison for edelgard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-04
Updated: 2020-11-12
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:13:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 15
Words: 302,619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22093897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AMX004_Qubeley/pseuds/AMX004_Qubeley
Summary: Edelgard is going to conquer her fear of rats, even if it kills her.And thanks to a mysterious foe with an axe to grind against the young heir to the Adrestian Empire, an exotic poison perfect for "making people disappear," and Garreg Mach Monastery's exponentially growing rodent problem, it just might.
Relationships: Edelgard von Hresvelg & Bernadetta von Varley, Edelgard von Hresvelg/Bernadetta von Varley
Series: The Mice-Adventures of Mousegard [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2162295
Comments: 371
Kudos: 286





	1. An Unexpected Roommate

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Year of the Rat!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Edelgard tries to get Bernadetta out of her comfort zone and ends up getting more than she bargained for. Hubert and Petra conduct an investigation. Ferdinand tries (and fails) to keep Caspar out of trouble. Linhardt and Dorothea go undercover to buy some weed.

There was only one thing Bernadetta found more welcoming than the sight of the officer's academy at Garreg Mach Monastery rising over the horizon at the end of a long day of battle and travel, and that was opening the door to her room after a long day and seeing a half-finished book on her desk and a warm bed waiting for her.

Much to her dismay, she couldn’t be in her room right now. She was in the dining hall squeezed into one of the long tables whose far end had been monopolized by the rest of the Black Eagles house because Caspar had _insisted_ that she join them for drinks and a special surprise. And while saying no to him was pretty easy, making sure he _heard_ it was much more difficult.

And so here she was, surrounded by the other seven students in her house, trapped like a rat in a cage, with a cup of slightly-warm apple cider staring up at her while everyone else’s conversations weaved around each other. Despite Caspar’s insistence that she _had_ to be here, she didn’t see why. Everyone seemed to be having just as much fun as they would have if she’d stayed in her room.

“Well, Bernie?” Caspar asked, grinning giddily and running a hand rakishly through his short-cropped aquamarine hair. “Isn’t this better than holing yourself up in your den?”

“Not really…”

“Oh, come on. What’s better than hanging out with your pals?”

Bernadetta went through a list in her head. There was reading, writing, sewing, sleeping… pretty much anything else that kept her alone in a small room for hours at a time…

“Oh!” Caspar leaned out away from the table and waved. _“Hey, Professor!”_

Professor Byleth Eisner strolled past the table and came to a stop, looking over the gathered students. As far as professors went at the Officers Academy, she was an odd one. Taciturn, laconic, and dry; a corpselike pallor to her face and blank, hazy gray eyes that never betrayed her mood or thoughts; long hair the color of seaweed falling just past her shoulders. No one knew who she was or where she’d come from, or even how old she was (she didn’t look much older than any student), or anything at all about her other than that she was the daughter of Captain Jeralt Eisner. Rumors abounded about her: Dorothea had once claimed that Byleth had told her she didn’t have a heartbeat and it had been impossible to tell whether or not she was joking.

Bernadetta didn’t know how she felt about Byleth. On the surface, when it came to her demeanor and mannerisms, Byleth was everything she found frightening and threatening in an adult, and that was on top of allegedly being a walking corpse. And yet Bernadetta found herself feeling oddly safe around her more often than not. She was a good teacher, attentive to a fault (she invited her students for tea all the time, and she knew everyone’s favorite flavor), and kind in her own way, if a little unsettling at first glance.

“Care to join us, Professor?” asked Edelgard. Her silvery snow-white hair framed a stern, stony face that nonetheless seemed to soften considerably whenever Byleth was around. “I’m sure we can make room.”

Byleth shook her head and declined; she was busy and had just been passing through. Somehow, Edelgard looked disappointed.

Bernadetta couldn’t help but notice Hubert slip a small, innocuous-looking flask from his pocket, surreptitiously uncapping it and with a flick of his wrist pouring a trickle of amber liquid into his cider. It wasn’t hard to assume the worst. Tall, pale, vampire-like, and a keen student of the dark arts, he invited the aura of wickedness that engulfed him. Was he poisoning that drink? He _was,_ wasn’t he? But why would he slip a drug into his _own_ drink? Was he planning on swapping it with someone else’s? She reflexively dragged her cup closer to her, guarding it with her hand.

She wasn’t the only person who noticed. Before Hubert could slip the flask back into his pocket, Dorothea cast a glance in his general direction and perked up at the sight of it. 

“Making some hard cider, huh, Hubie?” she asked. Despite being the only commoner among the Black Eagles, she showed no fear among those of noble blood and seemed to enjoy openly mocking them, making her by far one of the bravest people Bernadetta knew. Sometimes Bernadetta wondered if Dorothea even knew what a dangerous game she was playing by acting like that. She _had_ to, right?

Everyone else perked up as well. Bernadetta felt the table shake as the rest of the students all leaped from the bench as well. She stayed seated, tried to look as small as possible, and wondered if now would be a good time to run for it.

With all eyes on him, Hubert looked up from his drink. “Yes,” he answered curtly, with not even a hint of dissembling in his voice. He hid the flask almost sheepishly. “It’s whiskey. Don’t bother asking me to share; none of you are of age,” he added, almost reveling in the fact that at twenty he was the oldest student in the house, “and besides, there’s far too little for the entire class.”

A ripple of uncomfortable laughter slithered across the table. No one _comfortably_ laughed at anything Hubert said, probably because they were afraid of waking up with a knife in their back.

“Well, aren’t you full of surprises?” Dorothea asked, bravely slipping her cup vaguely in Hubert’s direction. “Are you sure you can’t spare a finger or two?”

Scratch that—nobody except _Dorothea_ comfortably laughed at anything Hubert said.

“I didn’t think they allowed booze in the monastery,” Caspar commented, a tinge of awe in his voice.

“They don’t,” Linhardt answered.

“I can trust you all not to… rat me out, can’t I?” Hubert asked, his lips twisting in a wry little half-smile as the one pale yellow-green eye not hidden by a lank black forelock roved around the table. He had a naturally sinister gaze, intensified by the eyebrows he didn’t have. _He didn’t have eyebrows._ Who knew what had happened to them? An accident while shaving? Burned off with acid? Had he never had them at all to begin with?

“Anyone here can keep a secret,” Edelgard said, crossing her arms. “But I expect you to have that disposed of at your earliest convenience, Hubert. You know the rules.”

Edelgard’s glare was perhaps the only thing that made Hubert wither. “Yes, of course, Lady Edelgard,” he said.

“I will dispose of that for you, Hubert,” Ferdinand von Aegir said, holding out his hand expectantly. It wasn’t possible to tell if he sincerely meant it or if he meant to ‘dispose’ of it with a nod and a wink. He acted the very model of a nobleman, but wasn’t completely immune to flights of whimsy. Bernadetta thought he mostly acted seriously to impress people.

Bernadetta pulled her hood over her head and took a cautious sip of her cider. Oh, Goddess, why did everyone have to be so _noisy?_

Edelgard’s eyes darted in her direction. “Everyone,” she announced, clearing her throat. “I hope that in all this excitement you haven’t forgotten why you’re here.”

Bernadetta felt a part of her soul shrivel up and die like a leaf falling into a fire. 

The rest of her classmates all sat down. “I remember,” Petra said, raising her cup. “We are giving the toast to Bernadetta for clutching the victory in today’s battle!” As a visitor from the faraway Brigid archipelago, her grasp of Fódlanish was not quite there yet, but her idiosyncratic manner of speaking only added to her charm. She was Bernadetta’s opposite in every way—daring, bold, adventurous, making her way through an unfamiliar world without the slightest trace of fear or anxiety…

As all eyes fell on her, Bernadetta wished she was invisible, or at the very least, small enough to slip under the dining hall table. “N-No,” she stammered, “I didn’t mean—I mean, it was just a lucky sh—”

“Here’s to Bernie-Bear, the best damn archer in Garreg Mach!” Caspar chimed in with raucous aplomb, raising his cup high, then grabbing her by the wrist and forcibly smashing the side of her cup into his.

Best archer in the academy? Best in Black Eagles, more like it, and even then only by default because no one else specialized in it. He couldn’t be more patronizing if he’d called her the best in all of Fódlan, or the best in the whole world. Bernadetta knew when she was being lied to or made fun of, or at least she liked to think so. She pulled herself free and went back to nursing her drink.

“Excuse me,” a student from another house snapped as she passed behind Caspar, “can you keep it down? Other people eat here, too, you know.”

“It’s called morale-building!” he shot back, yelling at the back of her head as she walked away. “Maybe if _your_ house did it, you’d win more tournaments, Lysithea!”

“Bernadetta, it is the custom here to be clinking the glasses, no?” Petra asked, leaning across the table and over Ferdinand’s lap to offer her cup to her. “For health and good luck?”

Bernadetta wondered if she would ever wake up from this nightmare. It all felt like mockery. How could there be anything praiseworthy about accidentally shooting a guy, even if the arrow _had_ gone right through his eye? And being sandwiched between the two most obnoxious boys in the house for this ‘celebration’ just added injury to insult. They might as well have tied her to the table.

She just had to close her eyes, try to block out the outside world, and wait for it all to be over. That was how it always worked. Look within, retreat to her inner sanctum, wait for the danger to pass like a mouse hiding in its hole from a cat. If she could just shut out the noise cascading over her like crashing waves on a beach, she could at least brainstorm some ideas for the next chapter of her story…

No use. When she closed her eyes, she could only see that bandit lying on the ground, spread-eagle, limbs akimbo, the long shaft of an arrow rising from the bloody eye socket under the slit-like eyehole of his helm like a flagpole planted in the earth, a ragged bloody halo circling his head.

She’d shot a lot of people since enrolling in the Officers’ Academy, but never in the _head._ Mostly in the arms or legs, often in the chest, mostly by accident, always with plausible deniability (she could always tell herself they were playing dead, because she’d read it once in a book that most quote-unquote ‘killed’ soldiers just did that when they were wounded). Headshots, though… there was no getting up from one of those.

_“Hey, Bernadetta.”_

Her eyes snapped open. Everyone was still here, still drinking, still talking. Mostly talking. She wondered if she could just leave, or if someone (i.e. Caspar) would try to hold her back. It was within the realm of possibility.

Someone tapped her on the shoulder. _“Hey.”_

She glanced over her shoulder and found herself looking up at—Oh, Goddess, not _him._

It was Sylvain Gautier, Blue Lions house’s resident louse. He was wearing the quote-unquote ‘charming’ roguish smile he always had around girls. “Hey,” he said, his voice dripping with swagger, a hand rakishly running through an expertly-tousled nest of brilliant red hair. “I’ve been looking for you. I, um, found this in the library.” He pulled out a familiar-looking book from his bag and held it out. “I think it’s yours?”

Mortified, Bernadetta snatched it out of his hands and stuffed it into her own bag, her heart hammering a tattoo against her ribs, barely able to stammer out a rushed ‘thank you’ under her breath. He hadn’t _read_ it, had he? She didn’t write her stories for _other people_ to read them!

“I read it!” he said, grinning like a loon and rakishly roughing up his scarlet hair. “And it was really good! You could be a professional writer!” He leaned over and rested an elbow on the table, wedging himself between her and Ferdinand, still with a practiced ladykiller grin plastered on his face.

She found herself wishing that Hubert had poisoned her drink. 

Ferdinand cleared his throat. “Excuse me,” he said, laying a not-so-welcoming hand on Sylvain’s shoulder, “we are busy here. Would you mind not, er, butting in?”

“So, where do you come up with your ideas, anyway?” Sylvain asked, ignoring him. “Your characters feel so _real!”_

“Bernadetta,” Petra called out to draw her attention away, “I am wondering, tomorrow after class, maybe you could be demonstrating your technique to me?”

“Uh, um… uh… yeah,” Bernadetta answered, so flustered that she momentarily forgot how to say ‘no.’

Ferdinand tugged on Sylvain’s shoulder. “Hey. Do you know who I am?”

“Yeah, you tell everyone three times a day.” Sylvain shrugged. “Well, I gotta go,” he told Bernadetta (thank the Goddess he’d gotten the point), “but I’d love to talk with you more sometime. Creative girls are such a rare catch, y’know?”

“I’m flattered,” she said, though she wasn’t. She watched Sylvain leave. Her pulse was still racing; if her heart beat any faster, she was sure she would die on the spot.

“I did not know you wrote, Bernie,” Ferdinand said, impressed. “What kind of things do you write?”

She wanted to say, ‘I’d rather you didn’t,’ but couldn’t force the words past her lips. Instead, she just shrugged and pulled the drawstrings on her hood tighter.

He raised his cup to his lips, then suddenly slammed it onto the table and shot up to his feet, his hand slamming against the table, his eyes wide with shock. _“Is that Lady Rhea?”_ he shouted out, flinging out his arm.

Everyone fixed their gaze where he was pointing, all at rapt attention, but Her Holiness, the head of the church, her divine majesty Archbishop Rhea was nowhere to be seen.

“Oh, uh…” Ferdinand scratched at the back of his head and sheepishly lowered himself down to the bench as everyone’s gaze shifted back toward him. “I must have mistaken that lamp over there for her headdress.”

As the night dragged on with interminable slowness, Bernadetta took a few more sips of her cider, but as her stomach twisted itself into knots, she found her appetite, or rather her thirst, desert her. Did Caspar _have_ to go into such vivid detail about how many new notches he’d put in the head of his axe this morning? At least Linhardt seemed just as queasy as her.

“I don’t feel so good,” she mumbled, slipping off the bench.

“Alright, see ya in class tomorrow, Bernie,” Caspar said. He sounded so casual and laid-back about it that Bernadetta realized she probably could have gotten away with leaving whenever she’d wanted to.

Goddess almighty, she was an idiot.

Dorothea waved goodbye as she headed out of the dining hall. “Goodnight, Bern!”

“I hope you will be feeling better soon!” Petra chimed in.

Bernadetta waved back half-heartedly and hurried out of the dining hall and into the courtyard. She had barely taken five steps before nearly tripping over a fat orange-and-white cat curled up in the grass. Rudely interrupted from its nap, it hissed at her and scampered off, dragging a limp hind leg behind it.

The last rays of the setting sun bathed the monastery in a soft amber glow, the darkening sky filled with streaks of violet and gold painted across the underside of the clouds. At this hour, the courtyard was empty, transforming it into a welcome sanctuary. A cool breeze whistled through the campus, sending a whispering susurrus through the trees and rustling the tall hedges and thorny rosebushes lining the courtyard. She hadn’t realized how hot and stuffy it had gotten back in the dining hall; the evening air was a godsend. Maybe it would be all she needed to feel better.

No good. She scratched at her forehead as her brain throbbed against the inside of her skull. Now she had a headache, too. And a feverish wave of pins-and-needles rushing under her skin. All signs of some sort of influenza, or maybe something worse…

_“Bernadetta, may I have a word with you?”_

Edelgard’s voice cut through the air like a knife through butter and struck her in the heart like an arrow. “I’m sorry!” Bernadetta squeaked reflexively, grabbing herself by her own shoulders as if to protect herself. “I-I didn’t mean to leave so early, I just—I’m not feeling okay…”

“I’m not here to accept any apology from you,” Edelgard said, catching up to her. A gust of wind fanned out her long silvery hair behind her. “I’m here to offer you my gratitude.”

“I’m sorry,” Bernadetta insisted. “I know not to expect forgiveness from you—”

“That isn’t what I meant—”

“Please, Lady Edelgard, if you could find it in your heart—”

Edelgard’s hand landed on her shoulder. “Bernadetta, I said, _thank you,”_ she repeated, her icy lavender eyes boring into Bernadetta’s.

“I’m— _what?”_ Bernadetta asked as her brain caught up to her ears.

“I had a lot on my mind this morning,” Edelgard explained, her eyes drifting and focusing on something far off in the distance. “I was distracted; those bandits caught me off-guard. If you hadn’t taken out their leader, I could have been hurt.”

“It wouldn’t have come to that,” Bernadetta said, knowing full well she was being talked down to. Edelgard was a terror on the battlefield; to say she could take care of herself was an understatement if ever there was one.

“Perhaps, but who knows? Surely you know that one well-placed shot is all it takes to fell even the strongest foe. Who strikes first in battle wins; and _you_ have a unique privilege and talent for striking first.”

Bernadetta nodded. She wasn’t sure how else to act. With Edelgard so close by her, most of her brain had just shut down, leaving all higher functions disabled and nothing but the most basic survival instincts running through her head. Being around her was like balancing on a thin plank suspended over shark-infested waters. One misstep, one wrong word, and unless she ran away she’d be a smear of blood floating on the waves. That was how people like Edelgard were…

Edelgard squinted at her. “You’re bleeding,” she pointed out, gesturing to her forehead.

“Huh?” She lifted her hand to her forehead in turn, brushed aside her messy bangs, and laid her hand on her brow; she pulled it away to find a few stray speckles of blood dotting her fingertips and lining the tips of her fingernails. Funny, she didn’t remember her nails being this long, or—she pressed one against the tip of her thumb, _ow—_ this sharp. “Oh. It’s fine. I must’ve scratched too hard,” she muttered.

The way Edelgard looked at her suddenly seemed more suspicious than concerned.

“A-Anyway,” Bernadetta said, feeling all of a sudden more vulnerable by an order of magnitude, “I should really be getting back to my room.”

With that, she hastily made an about-face and marched off in the direction of the dormitories, slipped, and fell flat on her face. The damp grass was cold against her cheek.

“Perhaps you should go to the infirmary instead,” Edelgard said, helping her to her feet.

“No, it’s fine. I just tripped.” Her heels slid up the backs of her boots. Her bootstraps must have come loose. “I just need to lie down for a bit.”

Now she couldn’t tell whether Edelgard looked suspicious or concerned.

“It’s already haunting you, isn’t it?” Edelgard asked as she helped her cross the courtyard on the way to the dormitories. “I can tell. When one aims for the head, it is never a pleasant sight to behold. Until today, you’ve been pretending the worst you did was wound your enemies, haven’t you?”

Bernadetta kept her pace slow and deliberate, her head bowed and eyes fixed on the ground, partly to avoid meeting Edelgard’s eyes and partly to make sure she didn’t trip and fall again. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s only natural. However, as a soldier, you will have to accept that you must fight to kill, not merely to wound.” Even though Edelgard was her fellow student and was only about six months months older than her, she was the head of the house, a position somewhere between student and faculty, and carried herself with an authoritative air and wisdom beyond her years.

“Sorry.”

Edelgard closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose. “Please stop apologizing.”

“Sor—I m-mean, okay.” Bernadetta took a deep breath and opened the door to her room, feeling a wave of relief wash over her at the sight of her own little sanctuary on the other side of the threshold, gloomy as it was with no light but the faint trickle of twilight bleeding through the windows. “So… h-how do I do it?”

A sardonic smile tugged at the corner of Edelgard’s mouth. Bernadetta didn’t think she’d ever seen her crack a smile like that before. “Perhaps you could bite your tongue whenever you feel the urge to say it.”

“No, I mean actually _killing_ people.” Bernadetta carefully trudged through the gloom to her desk and lit a candle, driving the shadows to the corners of the room. She immediately regretted keeping the conversation going. Her headache was back, there was an odd twinge running down her spine, there was an ache that went down to her bones, she felt feverish and prickly all over, like there were insects crawling under her skin…

Maybe she _should_ have gone to the infirmary.

“Ah, that.” Edelgard followed her inside. “Think about the man you killed. What was he?”

“A… A bandit?”

“Exactly. A thief. An outlaw. How many people do you think had already died by his hand, or seen their livelihoods in ruins because of him?” Edelgard’s eyes narrowed, her expression cold and merciless even with the soft, warm candlelight falling on her face. “The life you took today is a child tomorrow who will not become an orphan, a woman tomorrow who will not be made a widow, a man tomorrow who will not lose the means to feed his family. The life you took is equal to a dozen, perhaps more, that you have saved.”

“Um… that’s an… interesting way of thinking about it,” Bernadetta admitted. Maybe she could put that into the next chapter of her story. That was one of the fun things about writing. It was a safe place to deal with real-life problems… as long as no one else took a peek inside, that was.

A sharp, hot jolt of pain jabbed itself deep in her sinuses, throbbing in tune with her headache. Reflexively, she clapped her hands over her nose. What she felt didn’t feel like her own face. It didn’t feel like _anyone’s_ face. It didn’t feel like a _human’s_ face.

…Then what, she asked herself with mounting dread, _did_ it feel like?

This was some sort of hallucination, wasn’t it? Someone must have slipped a psychotropic drug into her drink. Maybe something like those rare mushrooms that supposedly made people think they could fly. She knew she should have kept a closer eye on Hubert…

Unaware of Bernadetta’s ongoing break with reality, Edelgard leaned over the desk, idly inspecting one of the hand-sewn carnivorous plant dolls resting on its surface. Leading her here, Bernadetta realized, had been a terrible idea. Who knew what she was thinking, looking at those dolls? She probably hated them. Those weird, ugly plants, of _course_ they were the weird, ugly girl’s favorites.

She felt dizzy and lightheaded, her heartbeat a frantic tempo, the light dimming as color leeched from the room and dark miasma ate into the corners of her field of view. She wanted it all to stop. The day had started bad, the middle had been bad, the end had been bad; saints only knew _what_ was happening to her right now; and on top of that, even though all she wanted to do was hide under a blanket and wait for whatever the hell was going on to stop, Edelgard von Hresvelg, _next in line for the imperial throne,_ was standing in her room and looking at all her stuff with a silent, cold air of judgment.

Edelgard slipped her finger into the felt pitcher plant’s gaping maw. It must have just been Bernadetta’s imagination, but she seemed to have suddenly gotten just a little taller. _Everything_ seemed to have suddenly gotten taller. “But I wonder, what creates those men? Those people whose very existence destroys dozens of lives as they run their course?” she asked sharply. “What brings them to such a lowly state? Is it a fault in their souls, or is there something more to it?”

“Uh…” Bernadetta answered, backing away toward the far wall and uncovering her face just briefly enough to catch a glimpse of it in the little mirror propped up on the stone windowsill. In the dim light, though wreathed in shadow, she could definitely make out what looked like a snout and whiskers.

Edelgard didn’t wait for an answer. If there was one thing that could be said about her with absolute certainty, it was that she had a Vision with a capital V, and once she started pontificating, she could keep going for a long time. “I believe our society is to blame,” she continued. “A society that transforms men into beasts. For the sake of a just and peaceful world, a society like that must be itself transformed. I will be… _we_ will be the agents of that change.” She turned to face her. Bernadetta covered her face again. “Can I count on you and your bow to stand behind me, Bernadetta von Varley?” Edelgard asked.

“Um… yeah, sure,” Bernadetta squeaked, though her head was so thick with fog that she couldn’t make even the slightest effort to comprehend what Edelgard had been saying. Her voice was muffled by her hands, her breath hot and heavy against her palms.

She had to get Edelgard out of here. But how do you tell _the imperial princess_ to get out? She couldn’t just say ‘leave’ to her no matter how many times she said ‘please’ before it!

“I think I’m gonna vomit,” she blurted out instead as the room spun around her and her legs crumpled beneath her.

Edelgard was at her side in a flash. “I’m going to find the professor,” she announced. “She will know what to d—”

She stopped as though her words had just crashed headlong into a brick wall, her eyes widening and mouth hanging agape in shock. And just as everything went black, Bernadetta heard a horrified scream pierce the air.

* * *

Bernadetta woke up to the feeling of a mattress beneath her and a blanket draped over her. What a wonderful thing after such a terrible day. She’d had such a bizarre nightmare, though, so coherent and vivid and yet so unreal and terrifying. Edelgard had been lecturing her about society and rummaging through all of her things, and meanwhile it had felt like her body was soft clay or melting candlewax…

_“Are you alright, Lady Edelgard?”_

That was Hubert’s voice. What was _he_ doing in her bedroom? And Edelgard, too? But if _she_ was here, then didn’t that mean she hadn’t been dreaming?

_“I’m fine, thank you. I merely passed out a little.”_

_“A little. At any rate, it’s good to see you safe.”_

_“What about Bernadetta? What… happened to her?”_

It _hadn’t_ been a nightmare. What a horrible thing to hallucinate, though—that horrible crawling and prickling under her skin, that ache deep down in her bones, that snout—

Trembling with trepidation, she lifted her hand, stirring under the blanket, and cupped her hand over her snout.

Okay. She was still hallucinating.

_“Poison, by the looks of it.”_

“…Poison _did that.”_

_“Indeed. It’s something I read about not too long ago. An interesting poison, but a cowardly one—one for people who want to make their problems ‘disappear’ but can’t bear the thought of taking a life themselves. She should count her blessings she received such a small dose.”_

A _small_ dose? How much longer would she be hallucinating if she’d gotten a _small_ dose? And what did Hubert mean about ‘making problems disappear?’

 _“A poison that does something like_ that… _Isn’t there a simpler explanation? Could it have something to do with her Crest?”_

 _“I’ll admit I can’t rule that out entirely. But do you really want me to call Professor Hanneman down here and let him poke and prod at her? Do you think_ she _wants that?”_

 _“No, I suppose not. Poison, though… Who would want to do that to_ her?”

_“Who indeed, Lady Edelgard. Who indeed.”_

Bernadetta gasped. Oh, Goddess, _he’d_ poisoned her, hadn’t he? He wanted to make her disappear! What had she ever done to him to deserve that? She racked her brain. Had she slighted him at some point? Did he have some sort of animus toward her because she’d told him he was terrifying once? That was it, wasn’t it?

 _“I’ll find the Professor._ _I’m sure she’ll be of help to us.”_

 _“Please allow me to go in your stead._ _I’m certain our mystery poisoner’s intended target was you. Until we find whoever did this, I think it would be prudent to keep a low profile.”_

These hallucinations were unnervingly vivid. She could feel so clearly the whiskers tickling her palm and the long, thin tail wrapping itself around her ankle—

She threw off the covers and shot upright with a strangled, hoarse scream, as though she were trying to pull herself away from a roach or spider that had slipped into the bed. Her heart fluttered, her pulse throbbing in her ears.

Hubert turned to face her, the light from the desktop lamp illuminating only a sliver of his face like a waning crescent moon. Even with his face bathed in shadow, though, the sardonic little smirk on his face was evident. He was so _creepy_ when he smiled.

“Ah, Bernadetta, you’re awake,” he said. “The new look suits you, in my opinion,” he added with a sinister chuckle (he didn’t know how to do it any other way).

Edelgard crossed her arms, unamused. “Hubert.”

“But I digress,” he said, heading out the door. “I will fetch the Professor. You two make yourselves comfortable.”

Edelgard did not look very comfortable and made no effort to make herself less uncomfortable. She stole a glance at her and put a hand over her mouth to hide a repulsed grimace. Bernadetta had never seen her so rattled.

Seized with equal parts dread and morbid curiosity, Bernadetta crawled out of bed to the mirror resting on the windowsill. Questions bubbled up in her head like a swarm of ants pouring from an anthill— why was the bed so _wide,_ and why was it so far off the ground, and why did the window seem to loom over her, and why did her clothes feel so loose, and why was the mirror so much bigger now as she grasped it in her hands?

Her reflection answered every question before she could ask it.

Framed by a comfortingly familiar mop of violet hair was a disconcertingly _un_ familiar mousy gray face, one that was pointy and fuzzy and whiskery. She brushed her finger against her whiskers and watched them twitch. Touching even their tips was like touching a part of her face. She felt faint again.

 _This_ was the ‘new look’ Hubert had been teasing her about? But if _he_ could see it, too, then that meant…

“I’m not hallucinating, am I?” she asked.

Still pointedly refusing to look in her direction, Edelgard shook her head. “No.”

Well, that was that. It was all real. Bernadetta flopped onto her bed and stared up blankly at the ceiling. “Okay.” 

She’d half expected to scream again or start crying. No. Just, ‘okay,’ as measured as a ruler and as empty as her head now felt.

The door rattled in its frame, rudely jolting her out of her resigned malaise.

 _“Bernie!”_ Caspar shouted from the other side, his voice muffled. _“I heard a scream! You okay in there?”_ The door rattled again. _“Hold on! I’m coming in!”_

Edelgard glanced at Bernadetta, her mouth drawn taut in a nervous scowl, and shook her head and mouthed, _‘No.’_ Bernadetta nodded in agreement.

 _“Don’t worry! I’m here!”_ The door rattled again to no avail. _“I’m, uh…”_ The door rattled one more time. _“I’m gonna get the Professor! Don’t panic, I—Oh, hi, Professor, I was just…”_

Edelgard relented and opened the door to let Byleth in. The professor strode in, with Hubert looming over her (looming was his natural state of being) as he trailed behind her. Though he tried to shut the door on his way in, though, Hubert was unable to stop Caspar from worming his way into the room.

Bernadetta groaned. This was just what she needed—more people in her bedroom. One was enough, and only when it was herself.

“Bernie!” Caspar fought his way past Hubert, who was making an unexpectedly-valiant attempt to shove him back out the door. “What happened? You’re, uh…” His brow furrowed, his eyebrows knitting together. “…tiny.”

She suddenly realized that she had shrunk so much that the only part of her uniform that hadn’t slipped away from her was her blouse, and she was swimming in it. Or rather, _drowning_ in it.

She couldn’t burrow under the blanket quickly enough.

While this definitely wasn’t the _worst_ night of her life by a long shot, it was bad in a more unique way than any other bad day she’d ever had, and she could only pray it would end soon.

* * *

While this was far from the worst night of Edelgard’s life, it was bad in a singularly unique way that she didn’t think could be surpassed, and she could only hope it would end soon.

She didn’t like rodents. No, it was fairer to say she found herself disgusted by them. To be more specific, it was _rats_ she had a problem with, but when one was locked in a pitch-black dungeon, fatigued yet sleepless in the middle of the night, surrounded by the dead and dying, one could hardly be expected to have the presence of mind or the acuity of eyesight to tell a rat from a mouse. (Time and time again, Hubert had gone to the trouble of pointing out to her the physical features that distinguished mice from rats, but it hardly made much of a difference—fears were not rational things.)

And so understandably, watching one of her classmates turn into a mouse, or at least _mostly_ into a mouse, had shaken her. She couldn’t believe she’d actually _passed out,_ though. It was good that Hubert had come to her aid and not someone else—she couldn’t fathom how embarrassing that would have been if, for example, it had been some other student like Ferdinand von Aegir, or Professor Byleth herself helping her back to her feet instead.

Not that she would have _minded_ having Byleth’s arms around her, but it would simply have been unbecoming of her.

Once he’d sworn Caspar to secrecy on pain of torture and death and removed him from the room, Hubert set to work catching Byleth up to speed. She nodded along to his explanation, although the faraway look in her eyes made it seem as though she were actually listening to someone else whom only she could hear.

“…And so, if possible, I would like to keep this… _issue_ between you and the rest of the Black Eagles as needed,” he concluded, glowering in his usual manner. “I smell a rat. We can’t afford to blindly assume that the culprit isn’t among the faculty. Especially if my theory is correct and the intended target was indeed Lady Edelgard.”

Edelgard gripped herself tightly by the arms and suppressed a shudder. The very thought that such an exotic poison had been intended for her disgusted and unnerved her. This wasn’t the first time she’d had to worry about being assassinated (as next in line for the throne and a woman with great ambitions, she had plenty of enemies in high places), nor would it be the last, but never had she dealt with an attempt on her life tailor-made to prey on her most deep-seated phobia.

It had to be a coincidence. No one knew about her rodent problem save for herself and Hubert. All the same, though, that poison would have been a horrifying thing for her to succumb to—inwardly, she doubted she could take it as well as Bernadetta had. 

She wasn’t fully willing to discount the possibility that it _was_ something to do with Bernadetta’s Crest—those things caused such great pain to the world and to humanity in so many ways—but on the other hand, Hubert knew his poisons, and she trusted his expertise to the end.

It occurred to her that this was the second time today that the meek and unassuming girl from the house of Varley had saved her from an ignoble fate. Once again, she owed Bernadetta her gratitude.

Byleth gave the lump on the bed a gentle, consoling pat. The lump let out a muffled whimper. “You want to investigate this yourself?” she asked Hubert.

“Of course, I’ll accept your help if you’re offering it,” he replied with a formal bow, “but yes, I believe we should avoid involving outside help so as to avoid arousing the culprit’s suspicion. Furthermore…” He turned to face Edelgard. “Lady Edelgard, I have a proposition for you, if you will hear it.”

Edelgard took a breath and rebuilt her shattered composure. “I will.”

“It’s possible that our would-be assassin is unaware that their poison reached the wrong target. If you carry on normally, they’ll know that they’ve failed and will no doubt redouble their efforts.” Hubert stroked his chin thoughtfully, an almost-wicked gleam in his yellow eyes. “However, if you were to… vanish, and your room was found to be empty…”

“You want to pretend their plan worked,” Edelgard concluded. “If they believe they’ve won, they’ll be sloppy and overconfident. All the easier to root out and crush.” 

Hubert bowed. “You took the words from my mouth. Of course,” he added, turning his attention to Byleth, “that is assuming our professor doesn’t mind you missing a day or two of lessons…”

“Well, Professor? What do you think?” Edelgard asked Byleth. Hiding wasn’t exactly her style, but Hubert’s logic felt sound to her, and if it was a solid tactical decision, she would gladly set her pride aside. She trusted Byleth to make the right call in the end. She always did.

Byleth nodded. “I’ll allow it.”

Of course, Edelgard mused, Byleth wanted the would-be assassin found before they could strike again. It was hard enough to teach kids. It would be even harder to teach a classroom full of mice.

“So where,” she asked Hubert, “did you have in mind for me to ‘vanish’ to?” There were plenty of nooks and crannies in the monastery, although she couldn’t say she’d relish the thought of hiding in any of them. Besides, if the culprit knew of her phobia, what other secrets did they know about her?

“Well,” Hubert answered, “it just so happens we have a room available. A room whose occupant is already accounted for and that no one would suspect is harboring two people.” His eye darted around the room, settling on the bed on the lump in the blanket that was Bernadetta, and the long, thin pink tail poking out from under the edge of the tangled mass of sheets. “Especially considering that one is as quiet as… a mouse.”

Edelgard followed the path of Hubert’s gaze and clenched her teeth as the bottom dropped out of her stomach.

“Of course,” she said.

* * *

Shafts of early morning sunlight streamed in through the windows of the Black Eagles’ classroom the next morning, coaxing out long, skewed shadows from the two columns of desks lining the room.

Hubert waited for the rest of the class, minus Edelgard and Bernadetta, to settle down and for Byleth to close and lock the door behind her. “I’m sure you're all wondering,” he announced to the other five students, “why the Professor and I have brought you here so early.”

Ferdinand held a hand to his mouth and stifled a yawn. “Nothing good, I take it…”

Caspar raised his hand. “Can I tell them?”

“Where are Edelgard and Bernadetta?” Petra asked, surveying the room. “Bernadetta I understand, but Edelgard is _never_ being late.”

“By the Goddess, you finally did it,” Linhardt deadpanned, slinking into a chair. “You killed them. I knew it was only a matter of time.”

Hubert glared at him.

“Bernie’s a mouse now,” Caspar blurted out. Everyone looked at him as though he’d grown a second head, which wouldn't have been that much more insane of a prospect.

How very tactful of him. This was _exactly_ what Hubert needed.

“Well, not a _mouse_ mouse,” he backtracked as the incredulous eyes of every other student in the house drilled holes in his head. “More like a half-mouse… mouse… person.” He looked at Hubert with pleading eyes. “Hey, back me up. You and Edelgard and the Professor were _there.”_

Hubert sighed, rolled his eyes, and deigned to explain what had happened last night. Mostly. He played his cards close to his chest; there was no reason for his classmates to know _everything_ he knew.

Linhardt raised his hand. “Hubert, I have a question.”

Hubert crossed his arms as if to say, _I’m not a professor; you can just_ ask.

“Are you _sure_ it’s not a Crest thing?”

“Positive.” Though Bernadetta possessed a minor Crest of Indech, such a birthright generally did not cause such odd transformations. Indeed, the only Crest known to have such an effect had been lost to the ages, if it had ever existed at all in the first place.

“But there _is_ precedent for it. You remember what happened to Miklan.”

 _“He_ didn’t even _have_ a—”

“And then there’s the cursed Crest of Maurice—”

Hubert nearly laughed. A Demonic Beast was the _furthest_ thing in the world from what Bernadetta had become. “Have you been listening to Mercedes’ ghost stories again? I _know_ about all those things,” he replied snippily. “I also know my poisons.” There wasn’t a single person, student or faculty, who knew more about poisons than him; only Claude von Riegan, head of the Golden Deer house, came close.

“You are telling us a _poison_ did this?” Ferdinand scoffed uneasily, half-laughing at how ludicrous the very thought was. “That is certainly an exotic poison.”

“Indeed,” Hubert replied, already feeling close to his wits’ end. “It is a work just as much of magic most foul as it is of chemistry. The kind of magic beloved by those who slither in the dark.”

He wondered to himself, could _they_ have been responsible for this? Another thing to keep between himself and Edelgard.

“How can you be sure Edie was the target?” Dorothea asked, still rubbing the bleariness from her eyes. “Maybe some other noble family has it out for House Varley.”

“For the same reason I know for a fact that it was poison.” Hubert could feel his fingernails bite into his palms from how tightly he was clenching his fists and forced himself to remain calm. “I saw someone slip it into Lady Edelgard’s drink yesterday evening.”

A chorused outburst of confusion and disbelief filled the room.

“I didn’t see _who,”_ he continued once the uproar had died down, “but I saw a disturbance in her cup and knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that _someone_ had put an additive in it at some point while we were distracted.”

“I didn’t see anything,” Caspar said.

Linhardt shook his head. “Neither did I.”

Ferdinand, Hubert noted, suddenly looked a little paler, a little less as though he were writing this off as an amusing little joke. He had a terrible poker face. “Nor… did I,” he muttered unconvincingly.

“I was not seeing anything, either,” Petra admitted glumly. “We were all being distracted.”

“I spiked my own drink,” Hubert continued, “to quietly signal to Lady Edelgard that I believed her drink had been poisoned and give her an opportunity to dispose of it. However, I became worried that she had missed my signal when she did not use the toast as an excuse to get rid of it. Therefore, at the next opportunity, I took it upon myself to swap hers with someone else’s.”

Incensed, Caspar shot to his feet. “You _what?”_

 _“Why would you_ do _that?”_ Dorothea cried out, disgusted. “What did poor Bern ever do to _you?”_

“Not as much as what _I’m_ gonna do to you!” Caspar shouted, putting a leg up on his desk and rolling up his sleeves, a fire in his eyes and a snarl twisting his face. Linhardt grabbed him by the arm in a vain attempt to pull him back; Byleth rushed in front of him and held out her arm, though, holding him back without a word or a change in the ever-impassive expression on her face. Still scowling and filled with pent-up rage, but loath to fight his way past his teacher, he stepped off the desk and jammed his fists angrily into his pockets.

“Of course I didn’t give _her_ the poisoned cup,” he said, raising his voice to be heard above the clamor. Ferdinand, once again, had gone pale, betraying his usual demeanor. “Or, rather, _I_ didn’t give it to her. Isn’t that right, Ferdinand von Aegir?”

The room went silent. Everybody’s eyes darted between Ferdinand and Hubert, tension so thick it could be cut with a knife blanketing the classroom.

Ferdinand scowled and clenched his fists. “You greasy-haired mongrel—you tried to turn me into a _mouse?!”_

Hubert returned his scowl with a glare of his own. _And failed, unfortunately,_ he almost shot back. “Rest assured, my aim was not to turn you into a mouse—though I’m certain it would be an improvement.”

Before Ferdinand could explode, Dorothea stood up and held him back. “Wait a minute! Ferdie isn’t… a mouse. How did _Bern_ end up with the poison instead?” she asked.

“Yes, how _did_ she end up with the poison?” Hubert parroted, looking Ferdinand right in his angry eyes and knowing exactly what hidden darkness that righteous indignation was hiding. “Perhaps you noticed that your drink had been swapped, assumed the worst, engineered a distraction—such as, say, pretending to catch a glimpse of Archbishop Rhea—and took advantage of the commotion to exchange cups with her?”

“What? Of course not!” Ferdinand hotly protested, his face now burning as red as his carrot-colored hair. “A true nobleman would _never—”_

Hubert chuckled darkly, knowing full well the role Ferdinand’s treacherous father (and his own traitorous cur of a father as well) had played in wresting political might from Edelgard's father, the current emperor of Adrestia. _“Never_ is a very strong word, Ferdinand. Are you sure?”

“I did not know my cup was poisoned!”

“Yet you disposed of it awfully quickly for someone who had no idea it had been spiked.”

“I thought Sylvain may have slipped something into her drink when he was flirting with her!” Ferdinand shot back. “I switched cups with her to protect her. I feared it was a drug that would knock her out or render her, er, suggestible, and sought to bear whatever ill effects myself…” He glanced at his fellow classmates and Byleth in turn, his brow furrowing with worry. “You… Surely you all must believe me. Professor, you believe me, right?”

Byleth nodded. “I think you’re telling the truth, Ferdinand.”

Hubert was not so trusting, but it was a moot point as far as he was concerned. What had been done had been done, whether or not Ferdinand had acted out of noble self-sacrifice or malicious self-preservation.

“Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, it’s time to find our culprit. The Professor and I have already discussed dividing our forces to cover more ground.” He set a notebook on the table in front of Linhardt. “I’ve copied down the ingredients for both the poison and its antidote in this journal. You and Dorothea, visit the apothecary and ask if anybody has bought any of the ingredients. Get what you can for the antidote as well.”

“Ah, yes, I’ll just put it on my tab,” Linhardt responded blithely, opening the journal up to the first page and furrowing his brow at the sight of the lengthy ingredients list.

Dorothea took a peek at the list. “I can’t even _pronounce_ half of these, Hubie.”

Hubert moved on. “Petra, you and I will investigate the scene of the incident.”

Ever the enthusiastic one, Petra made a fist and slammed it decisively on the table. “No clues will be escaping us.”

Caspar crossed his arms. “Well, _General_ Hubert, any assignments for me and Ferdinand?” he asked testily.

“Keep an eye out for anyone suspicious, especially around Edelgard’s room,” Hubert said, “and stay out of my way.”

“With the utmost pleasure,” Ferdinand mumbled.

With Petra trailing behind him, Hubert made for the dining hall. As he stepped over the threshold of the classroom, though, Byleth reached up to lay a hand on his shoulder.

“Hubert,” she said.

“Yes, Professor?” he answered.

There was a dark look in her gray eyes; even though she had to look up to look him in the eyes, her stern glare still dug into him like a knife. Hubert could understand why she had been nicknamed ‘the Ashen Demon’ in her mercenary days. “Don’t poison other students.”

“Yes, Professor.”

“Once this is over, you will clean the stables every day after class for the rest of the month. At the very least.”

“Yes, Professor,” he answered with only the barest trace of a sardonic grin. Of course, she very well couldn’t let him off easy.

* * *

A shaft of morning sunlight fell across Bernadetta’s face like an arrow, the warm light bleeding through her eyelids and forcing her awake.

What a horrible dream! But thank the Goddess it had only been a dream. She sat up and rubbed the weariness from her eyes with the side of her fist and—

Whiskers.

And worse than the whiskers was the sight of Edelgard slumped over in the corner of the room, head bowed, silver hair spilling over her shoulders, knees tucked against her chest and arms draped over her knees. A flash of pain flickered across her face, her brow furrowing and a sharp grimace tugging at her lip for but a second before fading back to the serenity of sleep. A litany of soft nonsense spilled from her mouth as she muttered in her sleep. Somehow, the red half-cape and tights that were part of her uniform had changed color overnight from a vibrant crimson to a muddy sort of grayish chartreuse.

Once again, reality reared its ugly head and Bernadetta was forced to face the truth. Nothing that had happened yesterday had been a dream. Not Edelgard prodding at her collection of felt pitcher plants, not Hubert breaking into her room to talk about poisons, not Caspar barging in and catching sight of her wearing nothing but an oversized shirt, and most certainly not the whole thing about turning into a mouse.

It was real. It was all real! The whiskers, the fur, the tail, and worse than any of that, the _imperial princess herself_ sleeping on the cold, hard stone floor of _her bedroom_ like an impoverished peasant!

Welp. That was it, then. This was the end. She’d had a good run. No, scratch that, she’d had a very, very _bad_ run, and it had been all her fault. She had to have done _something_ to deserve this, after all. Cosmic justice maybe? Justice for _what,_ only the Goddess knew.

“Edelgard!” she squeaked as she scampered out of bed. She wasn’t totally sure how her legs worked now, but they seemed to work in spite of her. “I-I mean, Lady Edelgard, Your Highness, ma’am, I’m so, so sorry—please forgive me, I should have given you the bed—no, I mean, I know I don’t deserve forgiveness, just don’t hurt me too badly…”

As Bernadetta scurried toward the resting princess, Edelgard’s eyes snapped open and she leaped to her feet with a sharp yelp.

“I mean, you can hurt me as badly as you want,” Bernadetta added as Edelgard stared down at her with wide, wild eyes, her chest heaving. “Just, um… I’ll shut up now…”

Edelgard put a hand over her heart and took a deep breath, glancing out the window. “Oh, Bernadetta. It’s just you. You startled me. Is it morning already?”

“I was just saying you can have the bed; it was stupid of me not to offer it to you; I’ll just sleep on the floor…”

“What? No, I don’t—”

“If the floor’s not good enough and you want me out of your sight, I’ll just crawl under the bed! Yes, that’s a good idea. I’ll crawl under the bed so no one has to look at me. Yeah. That’s where Bernie belongs. Under the bed. With the rest of the monsters.”

“Bernadetta.”

“Y-Yes, ma’am?”

“What kind of soldier would I be,” Edelgard asked, “if I wasn’t accustomed to rough sleeping?”

“Um… a bad one?” Bernadetta scuttled backward. “Not that I’m saying you’re a bad soldier! I’m terrible, I’m selfish…”

“What I meant is, I don’t care about the bed—”

“I’m worthless, I’m horrible, I’m—”

_“Shut up!”_

Bernadetta backed away until she was leaning against the side of the bed. “Shutting up!”

Edelgard leaned against the wall next to the window and raised her hand to her forehead, her fingertips burrowing into her hair and raking her scalp. “I can hardly hear myself think,” she snapped, “for all your self-abasement.”

“Sorry.”

“If you reserved that abuse for your enemies, you’d be unstoppable.”

Yes, Bernadetta _knew_ that, but her enemies weren’t the ones who deserved that abuse.

Edelgard returned to standing awkwardly in the corner of the room, her arms folded over her chest, occasionally stealing a glance at her only to immediately stiffen and look away. She didn’t say anything more.

There was a faint scratching sound at the door and a muffled meow. As quiet as it was, hearing it felt like nails on a chalkboard and sent shivers up Bernadetta’s spine. “What’s that noise?” she asked.

“A cat, probably,” Edelgard muttered.

Bernadetta huddled up and buried herself in what was left of her uniform. She wasn’t sure how much shorter she’d gotten, but it was enough that the hem of her shirt came down to just above her knees, or at least where she was pretty certain her knees were now, which made it into a sort of tunic and at least let her preserve what little was left of her dignity.

This was the end of her life as she knew it. It wasn’t like she could leave her room as long as she looked like this. No more classes at the Officers Academy, no more being around her fellow students; she certainly couldn’t go back to her family. She looked wistfully to the window, lifting her head—

Wait.

 _She couldn’t leave her room as long as she looked like this!_ How could she complain about _that?_ To hell with classes and students and her family! She hated all those things! _This_ was the only thing she’d ever wanted from her life!

This could work out. The faculty could just make this room off-limits. She could leave the room at night, when everyone was asleep, and actually enjoy being outside for once. She could be the Monster of Garreg Mach, spoken of only in hushed whispers by the more superstitious students and ignored by any adult with common sense. This could be _great_ for her!

…Although she’d feel a lot better about her situation if her new roommate wasn’t constantly glaring at her and reminding her that she was a hideous monster.

There was a soft knock at the door, jolting Bernadetta out of her reverie. Edelgard glanced at the door, then looked down at her and shook her head.

 _“Hello and good morning, Bernadetta!”_ chirped the bright and ever-exuberant voice of Flayn. _“I heard from Caspar that you are awfully and indescribably ill and cannot leave your room under any circumstances!”_

As the younger sister of Seteth, the second-in-command of the Church, Flayn was the third-most important person in the monastery. And it just so happened that following her abduction and subsequent rescue, she’d insisted on making fast friends with… just about everybody in the Black Eagles house who’d so much as give her the time of day. She’d even been pestering her brother to allow her to officially enroll as a student under Professor Byleth. She was nice to a degree that bordered on saccharine, but she was also so closely watched by her brother, especially now, that one couldn’t risk talking to her without feeling as though they were signing their own death warrant.

Or, at least, that was how Bernadetta felt.

The other weird thing about Flayn was that despite acting so naively and looking like she was no older than fourteen or fifteen, she was extremely cagey about her age in the same way Byleth was, which was why Bernadetta suspected that both of them were actually a thousand years old at least.

 _“May I come inside?”_ Flayn asked.

Bernadetta looked up at Edelgard. Edelgard looked down at her and shook her head again.

_“I assumed you would be hungry in spite of your terrible illness, so I brought a plate of breakfast!”_

She felt her stomach twist itself into knots, so hungry she felt nauseous. She’d had days without food before and this moment brought all of them back to the forefront of her memory. Nonetheless, though, Edelgard crossed her arms and gave her a stern, pointed look that said quite clearly _we can’t let her inside_ without the need for words.

 _“I was not sure how much food to get, so I made_ _certain_ _I_ _had enough for at least two people!”_

Edelgard frowned, her resolve wavering. Clearly, she was just as hungry.

_“…Or one person and a very large mouse, I suppose?”_

“She knows,” she sighed. “No sense in keeping her out now,” she added as she crept over to the door and slowly pulled it open, carefully remaining behind it so that nobody watching from outside would spot her.

The first thing Bernadetta noticed about Flayn as the young(?) girl sauntered into the bedroom with a plate piled high with food balanced on each hand (how had she knocked on the door?) was that her normally emerald-green hair was the same shade of muddy grayish chartreuse as Edelgard’s cape.

Great. Now she was colorblind. That meant now she’d be even _worse_ at painting. Although at least from now on, Linhardt wouldn’t be able to fault her if she used vermilion instead of crimson. 

Then again, that didn’t matter anymore. That chapter of her life where she had to interact with people no matter how much she didn’t want to was over! What a liberating thought!

Flayn nudged away the cat waiting at the door with her foot and with great difficulty as it tried to worm its way through ahead of her. The sight of the cat filled Bernadetta with the overpowering urge to scurry under the bed. “No, g-get out! Bad kitty!”

Edelgard gave the resilient cat a much more forceful shove with her boot, slammed the door shut in front of it, took one of the plates from Flayn’s hand, and immediately started picking at the food. “Thank you for your hospitality, Flayn,” she said, relieved.

Bernadetta felt her stomach twist itself around her spine as Flayn set a plate down in front of her and the unmistakable aroma of still-warm rashers of bacon filled her nostrils. She picked up a piece and nibbled on it tentatively, not sure what to expect from it. What did mice eat, anyway? Seeds and berries? Did they eat cheese, or was that only in children’s stories?

Flayn sat down beside her, her hands folded in her lap, and looked down at her. Bernadetta realized with mounting discomfort that Flayn towered over her now as much as Hubert had before—she was just more than a head taller now, when just yesterday they’d been about the same height.

To say the least, it was disorienting. To say the _most_ _,_ it was actually kind of terrifying. There was something uniquely and perversely threatening about the sight of such a bright and cheerful face looming over her that Hubert’s dark demeanor simply couldn’t match.

“I suppose Caspar told you everything, then?” Edelgard asked Flayn between mouthfuls, her tone of voice making it clear that if he had, he was not going to get away with it unscathed.

“Yes, he told me everything he knew!” There was a mischievous twinkle in Flayn’s eyes. “Do not worry. He swore me to secrecy and told me that no one else, not even Big Brother Seteth, could know, and I will honor the promise I made with him!”

Bernadetta kept eating. She was so starved that the first few bites actually _hurt._ Not that she hadn’t gone longer without food before, but perhaps turning into a mouse worked up an intense appetite. The more she ate, though, the better she felt, and the food all seemed to taste more or less the same as before.

“You look like something out of a fairy tale,” Flayn told her.

What was _that_ supposed to mean? Fairy tales were full of grotesque and nasty monsters! “A-Are you saying I look like the kind of creature that could devour children?” Bernadetta stammered through a mouthful of food.

“No, wait…” Flayn backpedaled, thoughtfully tugging on a lock of her long, elegantly-pleated hair. “You look cute, like… hmm… Oh! The Mouse King from Daikonsky’s _The Radish Farmer and the Mouse King!_ Of course, I’ve never seen a ballet before, but Seteth played the songs from it on piano for me on last year’s Winter Solstice Eve and allowed me to look at the illustration on the libretto and I could all but _see_ it in my head… Lady Edelgard, have _you_ ever been to that ballet?”

Edelgard looked startled by the question. “Oh, um… no,” she sharply answered, promptly taking a bite out of a scone and chewing it excruciatingly thoroughly so that she wouldn’t be expected to say anything more.

“I think I will ask Professor Manuela if she has friends in any ballet companies. Perhaps she can invite them to the monastery for a performance this winter we can all enjoy!” Flayn was so giddy with excitement that she was all but vibrating.

Bernadetta was still mentally working through Flayn’s compliment and wondering if it was _really_ all that flattering to be told she looked like a king. What, was she too hideous to be a girl anymore?

She shook her head in despair. Being her was an ordeal. She couldn’t even hear a compliment without twisting it into an insult. No wonder no one liked her. Couldn’t they all just leave her alone?

“May I pet you?” Flayn suddenly asked her.

Bernadetta suddenly felt far too warm for her fur and wished she could pull all of her skin off. “Um… _what?”_

“It is simply that you look quite soft,” Flayn said, “and it seems that it would help you feel better, since most cats and dogs seem to enjoy being petted. I do not think mice are any different…”

“Um… no?” Bernadetta answered, squirming uncomfortably and mentally preparing herself to run.

To run _where?_

“Please?”

“No.”

_“Please?”_

“Flayn,” Edelgard interjected, glaring at her with cold, pale eyes, “you’re making her uncomfortable.”

Flayn stood up and backed away. “Oh! Bernadetta, I am so sorry,” she said, bowing. “I had no intention of offending you. Please accept my apology.”

“It’s okay,” Bernadetta mumbled, picking at the remnants of her food.

“Um… I will return at noon with lunch,” Flayn added, slowly backing toward the door, her face flushed from embarrassment. “Please do take care!”

The door slammed shut.

Flayn’s absence was like a weight lifting from Bernadetta’s shoulders. One less person in the room, one less intruder in her little sanctuary.

“Thank you,” she muttered to Edelgard.

Edelgard’s frosty demeanor did not soften, but as she sat at the desk and gazed blankly off at the room’s stone walls, she seemed slightly more at peace.

* * *

The breakfast rush was long past and the lunch rush had yet to begin, leaving the dining hall mostly empty save for a few stragglers who had overslept or who preferred to avoid the crowds and making the late morning a golden opportunity for observing the scene of what Hubert had insisted was an assassination attempt.

Petra treated the room as just another hunting ground, although she had to admit that here she was at a unique disadvantage. Indoors, unless the floor was particularly dusty or the quarry’s boots were particularly filthy, one could not expect to find even such common staples as footprints on the ground.

But she did not draw back in the face of a challenge. A hunter from Brigid could track any animal, even a person. If anybody doubted it, she would prove it to them.

Hubert walked in an arc around the edge of the table the Black Eagles had occupied the night before. “I was sitting here,” he mused, placing a hand on the table. “And Lady Edelgard to my left, and Dorothea to my right… and Petra, you were on the far end here, weren’t you? Next to Edelgard?”

“Yes. And on the other side of the table,” she said, “was sitting Linhardt, Ferdinand, Bernie, and Caspar.”

He nodded as though impressed by the sharpness of her memory. “And you noticed nothing, despite sitting next to Edelgard the entire time?”

Petra shook her head. “No, I was not seeing anything.”

Hubert stroked his chin thoughtfully. “I wonder,” he said, “how our culprit managed to slip poison into her cup with neither of us any the wiser. We were flanking her. Should they have approached from either her left or her right, they would have had to slip past _one_ of us.”

“I do not think our wisdom mattered. It was our alertness we were not having.”

“True. We were caught in the throes of revelry. Yet that is no excuse. If I hadn’t noticed the ripples in her cup, well… A poison like that would be a death sentence with so many cats in the monastery.”

He was correct. One could hardly walk five paces outside without nearly tripping over a cat. Petra couldn’t recall seeing a single rodent within the grounds of the monastery since she had come to the Academy.

Hubert’s expression darkened. “But for a stroke of luck… a flash of paranoia…” he muttered to himself. “I suppose we should ask ourselves who we saw passing by this table.”

“There was Lysithea and Sylvain,” Petra said, “and, of course, Professor. But we are not suspecting her.”

“No, of course not,” Hubert said, although his suspicious squint gave away that he _did_ suspect her, at least a little.

“But…” Petra thought for a moment, then raised her hand across the table. “They all passed by this side. They could not have reached Edelgard’s cup without leaning over all of us. We would all have seen them. So they are not being suspects.”

“No. But they could have been accomplices, unwitting or otherwise. However, that’s a rabbit hole I am currently unwilling to travel down.”

“Of course not. We are not hunting rabbits.”

Hubert’s lip curled in a faintly amused smile, and Petra realized she had misinterpreted yet another Fódlanish figure of speech. “Which brings us, unfortunately, back to zero. Did you notice anybody pass behind us last night?”

“If I had been having eyes in the back of my head, I may have.”

“How unfortunate.”

Petra’s eyes fell to the tabletop and glided to a dark blotch on the wood surface—a stain on the lacquered wood fresher than its long-since dried peers. “Hubert,” she said, “you were thinking Edelgard’s cup had been poisoned. But we were not seeing anything. Why were you having suspicion?”

His yellow eye followed her gaze down to the table. “I saw a ripple in her drink, and…”

“This stain looks fresh,” she pointed out, “and it is where Edelgard sat. I think the roof is taking a leak.”

Hubert’s gaze lingered on the stain. A fresh droplet of water plopped down on it with a barely-audible tap as if to punctuate Petra’s statement. “Then when was her cup poisoned?”

“I do not know. But maybe it was providence of the rain spirit that you were given awareness.”

Hubert chuckled darkly. “Doubtful.”

“I am sorry for being insensitive.” Petra bowed her head. Even in this place, a monument to Fódlan’s religion, she had forgotten for only a moment that the people here did not believe in the spirits spoken of in Brigid’s legends. “I suppose your goddess may have been speaking to you as well.”

“No,” Hubert said, “I simply meant that it wasn’t raining yesterday. Nor is it raining right now. So…”

He lifted his head and looked upward. Petra followed along.

“What,” he asked, “is dripping from the ceiling?”

Petra squinted, focusing on the dining hall’s high, vaulted ceiling. The ceiling towered far overhead, propped up by curved arches and buttresses nearly as regal as those within the cathedral at the far end of the monastery. A gleaming brass chandelier hung over the table, guttering candles lining its perimeter and driving the shadows back to the highest and farthest reaches of the ceiling.

Yet something else gleamed and glittered in the chandelier, not like a tongue of flame but more like the faint twinkling of a beacon to a ship at sea or gold foil resting in the sun.

Petra stepped onto the bench, then onto the table, and reached up, standing on her toes. The lowest point of the chandelier was still far out of reach, though, hanging mockingly just beyond the ends of her fingertips no matter how she stretched and strained her arm. If only she were a few inches taller…

Hubert climbed onto the table. “Here, stand on my shoulders.”

Hubert, Petra thought, was an easy man to misjudge. In fact, he _made_ it easy to misjudge him, as his performance in the classroom had attested. Yet in spite of his sinister demeanor, there was a refreshing earnestness and honesty to his words and deeds. Those he had respect for knew where they stood with him, as did those he did not.

With Hubert’s added height, Petra was easily able to reach the chandelier, though she struggled to steady herself without disrupting it. With the slightest movement, the chandelier threatened to sway to and fro like the pendulum of a grandfather clock, dashing whatever object had caught her eye to the floor and potentially breaking it. The table creaked and groaned ominously under her and Hubert’s combined weight.

It didn’t take her long to spy it. A glass vial resting on its side, short and squarish with a long, thin pipe protruding from its top. An orb of clear liquid as tiny as a single droplet of dew resting on a blade of grass hung precariously from the end of the pipe, quivering, threatening to fall.

She looked down and realized with a twinge of embarrassment that there were people below gawping at her, staring with wide eyes and gaping mouths and unvoiced tongue-clucks; she also realized that her inappropriate behavior, however necessary, called to their minds all of the worst stereotypes of her people as backward, backwater, unrestrained, uncivilized.

Shamed and self-conscious, she hastily snatched the vial up and slipped off of Hubert’s shoulders, landing with a thud on the table below.

Hubert stepped off the table and snatched the bottle from her hand. “Thank you for retrieving this for me, Petra,” he loudly announced to the rest of the dining hall. “I do not know what I was thinking, throwing it at the ceiling like that, but thank the Goddess you were here for me.” He clapped her on the shoulder. “You are a good friend.”

“It was nothing,” she sheepishly answered.

As he and Petra left the room, Hubert kept turning the vial over in his hand, glaring daggers at it and furrowing his brow. “The providence of the rain spirit,” he muttered, his lips curling bitterly.

Petra studied the vial, wondering how somebody could have held that over Edelgard’s drink without anybody seeing them hanging from the chandelier—after all, _she_ had been easy enough to spot up there. And the bottle couldn’t have been set up beforehand unless the culprit had known exactly where Edelgard would be sitting that night… unless Edelgard had not been the target.

She and Hubert had found a clue, and yet she felt no closer to understanding what had happened last night… or who had been responsible.

* * *

Keeping an eye on Edelgard’s (empty) bedroom was an exercise in tedium. The second floor of the dormitories didn’t have much in the way of foot traffic save for students in the Officers Academy occasionally entering and leaving their rooms, so the chances of a suspicious character coming through were low.

Ferdinand suspected that Hubert had posted him here with Caspar to waste their time and keep them out of his way, but on the other hand, despite Hubert’s constant insinuations that he was an idiot, he was well aware that the culprit may indeed return to Edelgard’s room.

At least being on such an uneventful stakeout gave him an opportunity to ruminate on the events of the past day. Part of him was still rankled that Hubert had tried to strike such a mortal blow against his character this morning. Of course, Hubert had described what had happened with perfect accuracy, but had told the story in such a way that cast Ferdinand as just as despicable, underhanded, and villainous as himself. Funny how one could be both truthful and a liar at once. Of course Hubert couldn’t conceive of a nobleman actually behaving with honor and dignity.

Yet Ferdinand had to admit that all the same, regardless of the motivations behind his actions, the result had been the same. He may as well have been a gutless, self-centered worm.

Caspar stretched and stifled a yawn. “Ugh. Can’t we stake out a place with more foot traffic? I could fall asleep with my eyes open here.”

Ferdinand barely heard him.

“Hey. Penny for your thoughts?”

“It is nothing.” He shook his head. “I am reflecting on the situation. That is all.”

“Don’t let it get to you. Hubert just needed to cast someone else as the villain before the rest of the class ripped him apart.” Caspar made a fist and drove it into his palm. “Hell, I _still_ might.”

“Language.”

He rolled his eyes. _“Heck,_ I still might. Gotta say, though, I’d never seen you so angry. You looked like you were ready to punch his head off.”

“I tried to exercise restraint. But he _did_ attempt to murder me.”

“Anyway, like I said, don’t let it get to you. You didn’t mean for what happened to Bernie. None of us did. We’ll nab the guy who did this and get everything back to normal soon enough.”

Ferdinand nodded. “Your confidence is inspiring, Caspar. Still, though… my heart aches for poor Bernadetta.”

“Man, you’ve really got Bernie on the brain, don’t you? Does _someone_ have a crush?”

“Most certainly not!” Ferdinand insisted, feeling heat rise to his face. “But… I _did_ know her when we were children,” he added.

“No kidding. Really?” Caspar asked, raising his eyebrows.

“Er… to be fair, actually, I knew _of_ her. She was rather infamous. Other children said she made cursed dolls of her enemies.”

“What, like she turned people into dolls? That’s messed up.”

“No, they were special dolls, and if you poked the doll with a needle, the person it was based on would feel it.”

“So, if the doll’s head got cut off, would the person’s head just roll off their shoulders? Or would it just _feel_ like you’d had your head chopped off?”

“They called her ‘Spooky Bernie,’ and they were all terrified of her.”

“Spooky Bernie, huh.” Caspar scratched his chin. “I think Bernie-Bear is a better nickname. Although I guess we can’t call her that anymore. But Bernie-Mouse doesn’t have the same ring to it. But I mean, it’s not like she was a _literal_ bear before, so…”

“I heard that once, her father tried to set up an arranged marriage between her and the son of another noble family,” Ferdinand said while Caspar mumbled about nicknames to himself, “and the son had nightmares for a week and begged his parents to call off the arrangement until they did.” 

He decided not to mention to Caspar that the noble family had been the Aegir family and the son in question had been himself. Now that he knew Bernadetta a little better, she wasn’t so bad, but all the same, he still remembered those nightmares. Memories like those tended to stick in one’s mind far more tenaciously than good memories or even _important_ memories. He couldn’t remember the first time he’d ridden a horse, and yet…

“Nightmares for a week, huh. Was _that_ one of her powers, too?” Caspar asked.

“Sh—She doesn’t _have_ any powers. You, er… you understand that, right? We called her Spooky Bernie and made rumors about her because she never talked to anyone, never left her bedroom, and kept drawing pictures of plants with teeth.”

“Right. You know, if she _did_ have magic powers, that could explain this whole thing.”

“I simply feel so _guilty._ I truly did believe that I was protecting her by switching her cup with mine. Instead… what has happened to her is my fault,” Ferdinand lamented. “Poor Bernadetta. Poor Spooky Bernie.” If it had been a _lethal_ poison, he would have killed her.

He wouldn’t be surprised if he had another week of nightmares over this. Another week of Spooky Bernie haunting his slumber.

“I know you didn’t mean to hurt her.” Caspar smirked. “What, you think I’d take Hubert’s word over yours?”

Ferdinand laughed in spite of himself. “Ah, thank you, Caspar. All the same…”

“Look, maybe it’s for the best. I mean, think about it. Better her than you, right?”

“Hmph!” Ferdinand crossed his arms, irked. He should have known his charitable feelings toward Caspar couldn’t last. “I cannot believe you. Were a man to draw a sword on a defenseless girl, of course I would leap in front of her! It is simply my duty as a noble.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Caspar said. “I mean, think about it. Bernie likes shutting herself up in her room, right? And now she has an excuse to stay there all the time.”

“Even so…”

“And on the other hand, if you hadn’t switched those cups and had gotten the same dose as her, you’d be, uh…” He held out his hand about three and a half or four feet off the floor. “This big. And I don’t think you’d like that.”

“It is not the size of one’s body that matters, but the size of one’s heart,” Ferdinand insisted, shaking his head and clucking his tongue in disapproval. Despite his noble blood, Caspar most certainly did not act like it. “I would fight just as valiantly if I were six feet tall, three feet tall, or three _inches_ tall.”

Caspar looked up at him, noting the height disparity between the two of them. “Easy for you to say.”

The two of them kept watching and kept waiting, both hoping that _something_ would happen to alleviate this dreadful tedium. Sooner or later, _someone_ suspicious had to walk past.

“Y’know, if you think about it, it’s all Hubert’s fault for not smashing Edelgard’s cup or dumping it on the floor. I hope the Professor nails him to the wall,” Caspar said. He yawned again and slumped into a casual slouch, but stiffened and stood straight as a ramrod as soon as the sound of footsteps began to echo from the staircase at the far end of the hall and a student emerged from downstairs.

The red-haired girl who came to a stop in front of Edelgard’s door was Monica von Ochs, a student of the Academy who’d been rescued from the Death Knight along with Flayn after having been missing for over a year. Caspar peered suspiciously at her. She peered suspiciously right back.

“What’re you doing standing in front of Edel’s room?” she asked the two of them. “Speaking of, have you seen her? We were going to have tea this morning…”

Caspar glanced at Ferdinand. “She’s, uh, sick.”

“Terribly ill.” Ferdinand shook his head. “She cannot leave her room. We are waiting here so that we may bring her food and water, should she ask for it.”

Monica’s brow furrowed with worry. “Oh, no! Has Professor Manuela had a look at her?”

“Well—” Ferdinand started, knowing there was no _good_ reason why Edelgard wouldn’t have been taken straight to the infirmary if she were indeed ill.

“She’s not _that_ sick,” Caspar answered.

“Then maybe I can see her!” Monica smiled. “I’m sure she’d be happy to see a friend…”

“Er, no,” Ferdinand said, at a loss for what to say. Lying and dissembling was much harder work than he’d expected. Or perhaps he simply didn’t have the talent for it like _some_ other nobles did. “You see…”

 _“She’s got diarrhea,”_ Caspar whispered to her. _“We had to bring, like, ten chamberpots in there. It’s_ so _embarrassing.”_

Monica’s smile shrank by a few molars. “Oh, I… I see,” she said, taken aback.

“Yes, it is all _quite_ undignified,” Ferdinand chimed in, sadly shaking his head. “Cholera is a terrible thing. I would like to ask you to keep this to yourself so as not to sully her reputation. You know how quickly rumors can spread.”

“I guess,” Monica said with a hapless shrug. “You know, dehydration is a serious concern for people in her… condition. Are you _sure_ she has enough water?”

“Uh, yeah, we brought her a fresh jug about, uh… ten minutes ago,” Caspar said. “She’ll knock on the door if she needs anything.”

“Is there anything I can bring her? A pillow, a blanket, some reading material…”

“Oh, do not worry,” Ferdinand assured her. “We have that covered.”

“Oh, you two are such good friends to her.” Monica smiled and strode off. “Let her know I wish her well!”

Ferdinand watched her stride down the hall and vanish down the staircase. He couldn’t help but feel a little uneasy. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but something about the way that red-haired girl smiled reminded him of a knife ready to bury itself in somebody’s back. Every face she made, every reaction she had, they all just seemed far too practiced.

No. He couldn’t cast blame on her just for _that._ The poor girl had been kidnapped and traumatized, for the Goddess’ sake! If she wore a mask, what reason could there be for it other than to hide her tremendous suffering from the world?

He shook his head. Hubert’s rotten attitude was clearly getting to him. That was the trouble with scoundrels and villains. If one spent too much time around them, one’s soul began to tarnish and corrode.

“I think we just found suspect number one,” Caspar muttered. “Lucky us.”

“We, Edelgard included, saved her from the Death Knight. What reason would she have to poison her?” Ferdinand asked. “If anything, she owes us all a life debt.”

“Dunno. We can worry about the motive later.” Caspar shrugged. “Hey, speaking of luck, I’ve been thinking. Isn’t it weird that Hubert jumped straight to poison before he even had any evidence?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, he moved Edelgard’s cup because, what, he saw a ripple in her drink and got paranoid? Even if he turned out to be right, that’s a hell of a—that’s a _huge_ leap of faith to make right there. And Hubert doesn’t really _do_ faith, does he?”

Ferdinand felt an unsettling unease in the back of his mind. “What are you suggesting, Caspar? That he is taking charge of this investigation to distract us?”

Caspar’s eyes narrowed and he turned his head in the direction of the closed door directly adjacent to Edelgard’s room. “I’m suggesting we should sneak into his room while he’s out and do some investigating of our own.”

Ferdinand groaned inwardly. Though Caspar had as strong a sense of justice as any proper nobleman should have, his sense of decorum and restraint was on par with a barbarian.

Scoundrels and villains, the lot of them. He was surrounded by scoundrels and villains.

* * *

Linhardt didn’t expect to find even half of the ingredients Hubert was looking for at the apothecary, but it wasn’t like there was anywhere else to look within fifty miles, so he supposed he couldn’t avoid doing the legwork. He suspected that Hubert had put him and Dorothea on this quest to get them out of his way. After all, it wasn’t as if he and Hubert got along. Then again, _no one_ got along with Hubert save for Edelgard.

The sky was clear and blue, the sun was bright, and the town that sat in the shadow of the monastery was lively and bustling. Not just the townsfolk, but off-duty knights and students with free time between their morning and afternoon classes took advantage of the good weather to do absolutely nothing at all. Seeing fellow students nestled underneath shade trees and sleeping like logs with their textbooks shielding their faces from the sun filled Linhardt with jealousy. On a beautiful day like today, any of them could have easily been him.

Instead, here he was standing in the middle of the street dressed to the nines and sweating under the midday sun, resisting the torturous urge to scratch at the false mustache glued to his face with spirit gum; Dorothea stood at his side in an equally ostentatious dress she’d pulled from her wardrobe—a leftover from her days with the opera company before she’d enrolled in the Academy—and her long, thick locks of curly chestnut-brown hair tied back in a luxurious mane of ringlets cascading down her back. He had a sneaking suspicion she’d taken a sadistic pleasure in picking out his ‘costume.’ He felt like he had a broom pasted over his upper lip.

Dorothea peered at the journal Hubert had left them, reading through the ingredients list for the poison. “Lin, what’s this one?” she asked, placing her finger on the page.

Linhardt looked at the item she’d singled out. “That one? I think it makes your tongue swell to three times its size.”

“And this one?”

“Severe tooth decay.”

“Is everything on this list so gruesome?” Dorothea asked, grimacing.

“No, this one here makes you, er… _euphoric.”_

“Oh, so it gets you high,” she said, seeing right through his euphemism. “I’d bet you know all about that.”

Linhardt fidgeted uncomfortably, tugging on his collar. Yes, he had partaken in certain stress-relieving medicinal herbs from time to time, but… “I don’t like what you’re insinuating.”

Dorothea laughed. “Oh, please, don’t act so above it all. Do you really think everyone in the Mittelfrank Opera Company _wasn’t_ getting high after every performance we gave?”

Linhardt saw fit to keep his mouth shut.

“Anyway, so you put this all together and you end up with a drink that turns you into a mouse?” Dorothea shook her head. “…I just don’t understand chemistry.”

“It isn’t the kind they teach in school, at any rate.”

“How does Hubie know about it?”

“I’d ask him, but I like being able to sleep at night,” Linhardt said, taking the notebook as the two of them weaved through the bustling town square to the marketplace.

The apothecary’s shop was tucked away in the corner, overshadowed by its neighboring stores so that even on such a bright day it seemed to occupy its own patch of twilight. A glum, ramshackle building, its roof a patchwork of old and new shingles and bits of bare wood and tin sheets like patches on a mended sock, it was a house that had no doubt suffered indescribable indignities.

If one were looking for illicit potions, one could do a lot worse than to come to this shop first.

The inside of the shop was as gloomy as its outside, guttering candles casting faint and flickering lights on dusty and cobwebby shelves loaded with vials and bottles of grease-colored liquids. The apothecary evidently didn’t care much for keeping his store tidy. Surely he must have sold goods of the highest quality for people to ignore such squalor.

Somehow, Linhardt found it easy to imagine Hubert spending his free time skulking around here.

But Hubert wasn’t skulking around here today—the only other customer browsing the shop this afternoon was a young Almyran boy Linhardt instantly recognized as Cyril, Archbishop Rhea’s servant. Cyril was a hard worker who put even the most industrious student to shame. If there was a mess or something that needed fixing anywhere in the monastery, Cyril was never far away.

 _“Is that Cyril?”_ Dorothea whispered in Linhardt’s ear. _“What’s_ he _doing here?”_

“I gotta get the best rat poison you have,” Cyril told the apothecary, standing on his toes to rest his elbows on the counter.

“I didn’t know we had a rat problem,” Dorothea said.

“We don’t,” Linhardt said.

“Rat poison?” the apothecary inquired, raising a caterpillar-like eyebrow. “Why in the world do you need that? There must be a dozen cats at the monastery.”

“Doesn’t keep ’em out of the kitchen. Or Lady Rhea’s room.” Cyril had a blunt, direct way of speaking that belied his age. Most adults were taken aback at first glance, and the apothecary was no exception. “And I think they’re gettin’ too tough for the cats to handle.”

“I see. Let me check in back,” the apothecary said, shuffling off to the shop’s back room, “and see what I have in the pest control section.”

Linhardt peered at a shelf labeled ‘medicine and tonics’ and watched a hairy spider the size of a gold coin creep across the dusty wood. “I wouldn’t trust anything on this shelf as far as I could throw it,” he said.

“I wouldn’t trust the _shelf_ as far as I could throw it,” Dorothea said.

Hardly a minute later, the apothecary returned with a vial of sickly green liquid. The bottle and coin exchanged hands and Cyril headed for the door.

“Hey, Linhardt,” he said as he passed by Linhardt and Dorothea. “If you were hopin’ to pass for an adult, heads up—your fake mustache looks like a broom. See ya.”

“Kids today have no manners,” Linhardt muttered as Cyril strode out of earshot and out the door, self-consciously adjusting the mustache.

“Oh, don’t let him get to you, Lin.” Dorothea smiled. “I think your mustache is very distinguished. And _very_ real-looking.”

Linhardt took the notebook from her hands and carried it through the shop to the counter in front of the apothecary. “Excuse me,” he said, placing the notebook down. “I’m, er, looking for any of the ingredients on these lists and wish to know if I can find any of them here.”

The apothecary stooped over and peered down at the notebook from across the counter, squinting through glasses as thick as windowpanes and stroking a bristly salt-and-pepper beard. After a few seconds, he took the journal in his hands and spun it around so he was reading it right-side-up, then took another few seconds to stare at it.

Well, this was promising so far.

“Oh,” the apothecary muttered in a concerned tone. _“Oh,”_ he muttered in an even more concerned tone. _“Ooohhh…”_ he muttered in a tone so concerned that Linhardt started to worry there was something illegal on that list.

What was he thinking? It was Hubert’s list. Of _course_ there was something illegal in it.

The apothecary looked up at him. He tried not to look suspicious by smiling suspiciously. “Aren’t you a student at the Officers Academy?”

“Pssh. Me? No,” Linhardt said, shaking his head and desperately hoping his false mustache wasn’t askew or falling off. “If I were a student, I would be over there right now in the middle of the day taking classes… or studying… or napping. Or whatever it is students do. I don’t know; it’s been so long since I was one myself.” He hoped the apothecary’s terrible eyesight made the mustache look at least a little less fake.

“Hmm. What’s your name?”

“Oh, it’s Lin… h… hmm…” Dammit, he was _terrible_ at improvisation. If only he’d taken more time to think about what alias he’d use…

Dorothea wrapped her arm around his as swiftly and tightly as a serpent coiling around its prey. “You’ll have to excuse my husband; he has terrible anxiety. Can’t even say his own name without stammering. My name is Manuela… er, Morgan… Morgan Manuel-Miranda. And my husband is Lin.”

The apothecary squinted at Linhardt. “…Lin Manuel-Miranda.”

Linhardt forced a smile. “That’s me.”

“Well, I’m sorry, Mr. Manuel-Miranda,” the apothecary said, slamming the notebook shut and sliding it across the counter, “but you won’t find most of these ingredients in this shop. Half of them, you won’t find outside of the Empire.”

“And the other half?” Dorothea asked.

“You won’t find them for sale _anywhere._ Least of all _here.”_

“Are you _sure?”_ she asked, resting her arm on the counter and leaning forward, fluttering her eyelashes coquettishly as she surreptitiously tried to lower the neckline of her dress.

Linhardt rolled his eyes. Although Dorothea had tremendous… stage presence, he was fairly certain this old man was too blind to notice her feminine wiles. “Er, Dor—um, Morgan— _honey,_ perhaps we have troubled this shopkeeper enough,” he whispered to her, tugging on her arm.

“Is there a chance you might have sold any of these ingredients in the past?” Dorothea asked. “Or that you know anyone else who sells them?”

The apothecary’s eyes narrowed. “If you’re asking me if I have any ties to the black market,” he spat, “then the answer is _no!_ Good _day,_ Lin Manuel-Miranda!”

With that, he spun on his heel and vanished into the back of his shop with surprising swiftness considering his age and feebleness.

“Wait!” Linhardt called out after him. “Do you have the medicinal herbs, though?”

There was no response.

“That could’ve gone better,” Dorothea sighed.

The two of them left the apothecary’s shop, blinking and squinting as the sunlight assaulted their eyes. Linhardt sneezed.

While they wandered through the town square and pondered their next move, they passed by Cyril once again. He’d gotten trapped in a conversation with Tomas, the monastery’s librarian, who had cornered him to complain about how many mice he'd seen in the library lately.

 _“…And be very observant around the dormitories,”_ Tomas cautioned Cyril, laying a hand sagely on his shoulder. _“No one wishes to see a hideous vermin scurrying out from under their bed. Mice can fit through holes the size of a penny. Make certain you lay plenty of traps around the students’ rooms, boy…”_

“Something wrong, Lin?” Dorothea asked, pulling Linhardt's attention away from Tomas’ lecture. Though he couldn't put his finger on it, something was worrying him.

He shook his head. “No, I’m fine. Just... _Lin Manuel-Miranda?”_

Dorothea laughed. “What’s the matter with that? Aren’t you enjoying roleplaying as someone without a ‘von’ in their name?”

“Never mind,” Linhardt sighed. “Let’s keep asking around. The sooner we can find a lead, the sooner we can take a siesta.”

* * *

The only reason Ferdinand accompanied Caspar was to talk some sense into him, but unfortunately, he found that to be a challenge too great even for him. Every word he spoke fell on deaf ears until Caspar planted his foot on the door to Hubert’s room and subsequently fell to the floor clutching at his knee.

“What did you expect?” Ferdinand asked, crossing his arms as he looked down on Caspar. “That Hubert would not lock his door?”

“I mean, _I_ don’t,” Caspar said, wincing as he pulled himself up to his feet and cradled his aching knee.

“That is a bold thing to admit to someone. Count your blessings you told _me.”_

Caspar inspected the door again, placing his ear near the lock.

“Why do you even suspect him, anyway? Hubert and Edelgard have known each other since they were children. He has never shown anything but loyalty to her for fourteen years,” Ferdinand said.

“That’s what makes him the perfect suspect. What would Hubert say? Keep your friends close and your enemies closer,” Caspar retorted, inserting two thin metal wires into the lock and jiggling them.

“What are you doing?”

“Picking the lock.”

“Where did you learn to do _that?”_

“Ashe taught me. I was talking to him about taking the certification exam for the thief class…”

“Unbelievable. Give it to me.”

“No.”

Ferdinand grabbed Caspar by the shoulders and tried to wrestle him into submission. “Give me the lockpick!”

“No!”

“Caspar, if you cross this threshold, it will be a point of no return!”

“I’ve almost got it!”

“I will call the Professor if you do not cease this!”

The door swung open, depositing both Ferdinand and Caspar on the floor of Hubert’s bedroom. Caspar, who’d clearly been expecting a chamber of horrors, seemed almost disappointed to find a perfectly normal bedroom with a perfectly normal bed, a perfectly normal rug covering the stone floor, a perfectly normal desk, and a perfectly normal little armoire sitting in a perfectly normal corner of the room.

It could have been anybody’s bedroom.

“All that for nothing,” Ferdinand scolded him. “Are you satisfied now, Caspar?”

Caspar wormed his way out of his grasp. “Not yet.”

Ferdinand grappled with him, digging his fingers into his shoulders, jabbing his knee into the small of his back, anything to pin him down and drag him back, as Caspar struggled toward the armoire and flung its door open.

“You shut that armoire, Caspar,” he growled in his ear, “or so help me—”

There were no clothes in the armoire. Instead, a grid of tiny cubbyholes lined the inside, each labeled with the names of poisons both mundane and exotic and each containing its own little glass bottle save for a handful of empty holes, all listed by effect in neat alphabetical order. Poisons to put people to sleep, poisons to induce vomiting, poisons to paralyze, poisons to numb.

Poisons to kill.

And one empty cubbyhole labeled _‘Polymorphus Muridae’_ and another empty one beside it labeled _‘Antemorphus Muridae.’_

Words failed Ferdinand. 

Words did not fail Caspar. “Holy fuck,” he breathed. “And I thought _Claude_ had a big collection.”

A heavy hand fell on Ferdinand’s shoulder.

 _“Well?”_ Hubert whispered in his ear, his voice a sinister, slithering whisper. Ferdinand felt every ounce of breath vanish from his lungs even though he hadn’t exhaled. _“Do you see anything that catches your fancy?”_

Ferdinand threw Hubert’s hand off his shoulder and whirled around to face him. “You!”

“Me.” Hubert nodded. “Now if you would kindly step away from my collection…”

“You did it.” Caspar glared daggers at him. “That poison was _yours!”_

“And?”

“…And what?”

“And what does that matter?” Hubert asked. “If you cared to use that walnut rattling around in your skull, you would have realized that the poison is also _missing._ How could I have poisoned poor Bernie if the poison wasn’t even in my possession?”

“We don’t know _when_ it went missing,” Caspar said. “Maybe you just forgot to put it back!”

“Do I really seem _that_ incompetent to you?” Hubert stepped back to block the door. “Think about who the original target was. What reason would I have to do such a thing to Lady Edelgard? And if I _had_ planted the poison in her cup, then why did I go through the trouble of switching it?” He turned to face Ferdinand. “Besides, aren’t _you_ a far more likely suspect? Haven’t you always wanted to… cut her down to size?”

“Do you think I would _ever_ mean that literally?” Ferdinand asked.

“I know that rivalry, however one-sided, can drive people to do terrible things,” Hubert said with a wicked, smarmy grin. Now he was just goading him. “But rest assured, Ferdinand von Aegir, even if you had succeeded, you would still _always_ be nothing more than an ant to her.”

Ferdinand raised his fists. This was the second time today that Hubert had impugned his character—two times too many. He wasn’t one to give into impulsive behavior easily, but Hubert had more than earned a beating.

Hubert raised his palm and conjured an orb of black and violet misama that flickered and wavered like flames. “Do either of you really intend,” he asked as a chill settled in the room, “to—what? Punch me in the face? Give me a shiner?” Shadows seized the room, blotting out the sunlight filtering through the windows; violet light danced across the contours of his shadowed face, turning the cavernous pockets of his eye socket and cheekbones into abyssal pools of darkness. His sinister chuckling grew to a crescendo of manic laughter. “Do you think you’re _capable_ of that?”

“Let’s find out,” Caspar snarled. “C’mon, Ferdinand. He can’t take both of us at once.”

Before anybody could leap into action, Hubert extinguished the dark flame, allowing light and warmth to return to the room; just as suddenly, Ferdinand felt as though he could breathe again.

“Ah, Professor,” he called out, bowing politely as Byleth stepped over the threshold with a piercing, accusatory glare aimed squarely at him. “You’re just in time. I caught these two breaking into my bedroom.”

“Hey!” Caspar protested. “We weren’t—”

Ferdinand took him by the shoulder. “We _were,”_ he clarified. “Hubert, please accept my sincerest apology on both of our behalf.” A true noble always knew when and why to apologize.

Hubert glowered at them. “I trust they will be reprimanded,” he said to Byleth.

“Wait, we can’t just let this slide,” Caspar said. “Professor, the poison belongs to him!”

Byleth crossed her arms. “Does it?”

Hubert lowered his head in what almost looked like shame or penance. “…Yes, the poison which changed poor Bernadetta is indeed part of my collection,” he answered, a weary and reluctant tone seeping into his voice. “My room was burglarized during our excursion yesterday. I did not realize it until I returned here after we’d had our celebratory drinks. Fortunately, the deadlier poisons were untouched. Unfortunately… the antidote was stolen as well.”

“You should’ve spoken to someone about it,” Byleth scolded him. “We still have plenty of soldiers keeping watch here.”

“I would have liked to,” Hubert admitted, “but I doubt the faculty would look kindly on my little hobby.” He sighed. “I suppose you’ll want me to dispose of my collection now.”

Caspar all but picked up his jaw off the floor. Even Ferdinand had to admit, he was seeing a side of Hubert he’d never seen before—a side of him who respected another authority beside Edelgard.

Byleth cocked her head as though listening to something only she could hear. “I’ll think about it,” she said. “As for you two, Caspar, Ferdinand—”

 _“Professor! Professor!”_ Monica’s voice rang out from outside the room, as shrill and urgent as an alarm. Ferdinand, Caspar, and Hubert followed Byleth out of the room and into the hallway where the red-haired girl stood beside the door to Edelgard’s room, doubled over, hands on her knees, panting for breath.

“Monica? What’s wrong?” Byleth asked, rushing to her side and taking her by the shoulder. “Are you alright?”

“It’s… It’s…” Monica gasped for air. “I… I wanted to see Edel, her door was locked, so I… I climbed the wall to her window and… and…” She shuddered and collapsed into Byleth’s arms, her face ashen, her eyes wide. _“She’s gone! Edelgard is gone!”_

Ferdinand glanced upward at Hubert to see him cross his arms and smile faintly to himself, as though a piece of some inscrutable master plan in his head had slid neatly into place.

* * *

Edelgard figured that the cosmos was punishing her. Just a few days ago, she had been wishing that for once in her life she could take a day, just _one_ day, to shirk every responsibility she had—to her schoolwork, to her empire, to her future legacy—and loaf around gorging herself on sweets.

She’d gotten the day she had wanted, albeit sans sweets, and it had been utter torture.

She woke up from troubled dreams as the cloudless sky outside darkened from azure to deep, velvety violet and the last gasp of the setting sun grew fainter, bathing the room in darkness. The dreams were the same as ever—the cold stone floor against her back; the dying words of her brothers and sisters echoing in her ears, gibbered nonsense amid faint pleas for help filling the air; rough hands clamped around her wrists changing to biting iron manacles as she writhed under the searing touch of the surgical knife plunging into her belly; the screams for her father; the feel of tiny claws pricking her flesh and scabby, hairless tails slithering against her skin as she lay on the floor, corpse-like; the stench of vermin stinging her nostrils as rats whose fangs were stained red from nibbling on the corpses of her siblings crawled over her—

But now the dreams were worse. More real, more urgent, more grotesque; on nights like tonight, they felt like an overblown exaggeration of those years of hell that nevertheless felt more real than her actual memories.

She jolted awake sprawled on the floor, her heart racing and pulse pounding, the rug underneath her just a little too thin to guard her against the coldness of the stone floor. However long she’d been asleep, it hadn’t been nearly enough; she felt even more exhausted now than she had been before she’d collapsed.

She couldn’t even remember falling asleep. The last thing she remembered had been cracking open an adventure novel from Bernadetta’s bookshelf after dinner—anything to alleviate the boredom of being quarantined in a bedroom that wasn’t even her own. She remembered reading maybe three or four chapters. It had been the literary equivalent of candy, stimulating but hardly nourishing, which had been fine by her. The book was lying on the floor next to her, its spine bent, its pages fanned out. She’d lost her place.

She pulled herself up and knelt on the floor, still struggling to calm herself. The remnants of the scars traced across her abdomen and wrists throbbed and ached, sinking their leaden hooks deep into her flesh.

She steeled herself and forced herself to steal a glance at Bernadetta. She was curled up in the corner now, her face tucked into her knees, her hood cinched tight over her head.

The hairless, claw-tipped paws, the sharp, furry snout, the pale gray-brown fur, the forest of fine white whiskers, the naked pink tail almost as long as she was tall curling around her like a whip—

Edelgard took in whatever details she could, _forced_ herself to confront them, but couldn’t help but look away and shudder.

It wasn’t Bernadetta’s fault she looked like a grotesquerie hand-plucked from her worst nightmares. And indeed, Flayn had even said she looked cute, and Edelgard had to admit that to somebody without her past and her emotional baggage, she probably _did_ (beauty was, after all, in the eye of the beholder). That stomach-churning, nauseating revulsion was Edelgard’s burden to bear and hers alone, and she hated to think and feel such venom toward one of her own classmates, one of her own _comrades,_ solely on the basis of her appearance. Bernadetta deserved better from her. _Any_ of the Black Eagles would deserve better. Even Ferdinand.

Perhaps not Ferdinand.

She pulled herself to her feet and forced herself over to Bernadetta, forced herself to reach out for her and slip her arms around her, forced herself to lift her up and carry her to the bed—forced herself to ignore the bristling fur and whiskers, forced herself to ignore the tail dragging its tip across her feet, her heart rattling against her ribcage, her blood singing in her ears, her lungs tightening in her chest and freezing her breath in her throat.

Bernadetta stirred, her eyes opening just a sliver. _“Ed… el…?”_ she mumbled, half asleep, barely alert.

Squeezing her eyes shut and gritting her teeth, Edelgard hauled her onto the bed and threw the twisted and churned-up blanket over her, then fell to her knees, as exhausted as though she had run ten miles in full armor, forcing herself to breathe through the rock-hard lump caught in her throat as she leaned against the side of the bed.

That night, she dreamed that her siblings had all transformed into mice, and all of them looked up at her with beady, pleading, accusing eyes.

* * *

Glaring at the purloined vial resting in his open palm as he stood in the hallway, Hubert raised his fist and rapped on the door in front of him. The sharp sound of his knuckles reverberating against the wood carried through the silence enveloping the dormitories. It was so early in the morning that the sun’s rays had only barely begun to seep out from beneath the horizon.

The door creaked open, and Claude von Riegan poked his head out. With his noble brow and bronzed, golden-brown complexion, he had a face some would call ‘roguishly beautiful’ (or at least _he_ would). But at this hour his mop of handsomely unruly dark hair, mussed from fitful sleep, resembled more a rat’s nest; his eyes were bleary and bloodshot.

“Oh. Hubert. Awake at this hour?” he asked, flashing a cheery smile nevertheless. “What’s up?”

Hubert quickly slipped the vial into his pocket. “I hear you’re an expert on ‘peaceful poisons,’ Claude. I wanted to ask you a few questions.”

Claude’s grin widened, his eyes twinkling in spite of his weariness. “Well, come on in,” he said, retreating into his room and beckoning Hubert inside. Hubert shut the door behind himself as he entered. 

As Claude sat backwards on his chair and rested his arms casually over the back, Hubert eyed him with the same sinister, suspicious glare he gave everybody.

“I could use a distraction from all this cramming, anyway,” Claude said, glancing offhandedly at an open notebook lying on his desk beside a guttering candle. He turned his attention back to Hubert and rested a hand casually against his cheek. “So, what do you want to know?”


	2. A Surfeit of Slitherers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hubert makes a new friend he can't wait to get rid of. Bernadetta and Edelgard have a discussion about sleeping arrangements. Linhardt and Caspar commit burglary. Edelgard makes a new friend she can't wait to get rid of.

Most people outside of other Black Eagles students (and even some of _them)_ were scared off by Hubert’s admittedly sinister demeanor. It was an affectation he had readily and consummately adopted to keep potential enemies on their toes, and it worked well—too well, sometimes.

If Claude was as put off by Hubert’s sinister demeanor as everyone else in the Officers Academy, though, he was doing a damn good job of hiding it. He was all friendly smiles and falsely-twinkling eyes.

“I have a thought experiment for you,” Hubert said, stepping across the threshold into Claude’s room. He wondered if Claude’s genial disposition was as much of an affectation as his. It was almost unsettling in its own regard.

“Alright.” Claude leaned forward in his chair. “Go ahead, take a seat.”

Hubert looked around Claude’s room. The only chair was occupied by Claude himself. The bed was piled high with books and a disarray of alchemical equipment and glass bottles of all shapes and sizes, as was the top of the dresser drawers. “I’ll stand, thank you.”

“Suit yourself. So, what about this thought experiment?”

“You’re expecting to engage an enemy army in battle tomorrow. However, tonight, you know that the general and his top lieutenants will be meeting in a tavern to draw up their battle plans. Your goal is to poison the general to incapacitate or kill him without being detected.”

“Who meets in a tavern to draw up battle plans?” Claude scoffed. “That’s bad operational security.”

Hubert crossed his arms, already frustrated. This, surely, was part of Claude’s strategy. “Imagine a reason for yourself. Here are the stipulations: You can’t know beforehand which table they will be sitting at, nor which seat the general himself will choose, and—”

“Well, that’s easy. I disguise myself as a cook and slip the poison into the general’s drink.”

“You can’t do that.”

“Why?”

Though he almost wanted to say, ‘because I said so,’ Hubert instead opted to say, “Perhaps the cook has very distinguishing facial features. That is not important. What _is_ important is that the general and his men are extremely paranoid and will be examining waiters, bartenders, and random passersby very closely to make sure nothing is amiss. It is vitally imperative that you or your agent are not spotted.”

“Okay, okay.” Claude rolled his eyes. “Any other details I should be aware about?”

“There is a chandelier directly over the table. It is a round table, so the general and his men can see in every direction. A direct approach will be impossible.”

“Hmm.” Claude stroked his chin thoughtfully. “This is a really complex thought experiment,” he told Hubert with a suspicious gleam in his eyes, as though he knew Hubert were adapting a real event for this exercise—one that, perhaps, he had had a hand in.

“Professor Byleth posed it to me the other day,” Hubert lied. “I found it refreshingly stimulating and figured you would be up to the challenge.”

And with that, the trap was set.

Claude smiled. “Any details about the poison I’ll be using?”

“Odorless, colorless, tasteless; a… _maximally effective_ dose is just a few drops into your typical beverage.” Hubert had almost said _lethal_ before stopping himself; old habits died hard, but he knew that Claude preferred poisons one could get up and walk away from (albeit rarely comfortably or right away).

“So it’s potent, huh. I’m assuming I can put it into a little flask with a pipette in the cap to more easily regulate the dosage?”

Hubert’s thoughts turned back to the vial in his pocket. A small, squat, squarish glass bottle with a long and thin snout perfect for dispensing its contents one drop at a time. “If you desire.”

Claude muttered silently to himself for a while, as though mentally acting out every possible vector of attack. Despite his casual demeanor and lackadaisical attitude, he was a tactical mastermind with a reputation for schemes that brought new meaning to the phrase ‘out of left field.’

Hubert scanned Claude’s face intently, searching every minute furrow of his brow or tremble of his lip or twitch at the corner of his eye for even the barest hint of a guilty (or not-so-guilty) conscience. It wasn’t that Hubert suspected him of being an agent for _them,_ the people he not-so-affectionately referred to as ‘those who slither in the dark,’ but he could have been an unwitting accomplice. _Anyone_ could have been. Or he could have had his own reasons—as the next in line to rule the Leicester Alliance, he was a clear rival to Edelgard.

“I think I’ve got it,” Claude said at last, snapping his fingers. “I’d have my agent sneak into the tavern, climb onto the chandelier, and drip the poison into the general’s cup from above.”

“It’s a well-lit tavern. The chandelier can’t support his weight. Your agent would be spotted immediately.”

“Well… it all depends on how small he is.” Claude winked. “I was picturing using a trained mouse or rat.”

“A mouse or rat?” Hubert asked, furrowing his brow skeptically.

“Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it,” Claude retorted. “Mice and rats are intelligent creatures—if you know how to train them.”

Of course. Absurd or not, Hubert mused, it fit all of the facts. And if somebody had both the poison and the antidote, they could temporarily transform themselves or their underlings on a whim…

“Genius? I know.” Claude leaned back and ran his fingers through his already-tousled hair. “I’d prefer using a rat. Rats tend to be more cautious than mice, so they have better survivability rates with traps, cats, and the like. Y’know? On the other hand, the mouse would be smaller, but on the _other_ other hand, a smaller mouse might struggle to carry the bottle.”

Hubert nodded. “I see,” he said.

“Thanks for the brain teaser, though. That was fun. But I gotta ask…” Claude’s eyes darted back and forth as he leaned in and dropped his voice to a low, conspiratorial whisper. _“This doesn’t have anything to do with Edelgard’s disappearance, does it?”_ he asked.

“And why, pray tell, would you think that?”

“Hmm.” Claude stroked his chin in an exaggerated parody of thoughtfulness. “Maybe because her loyal manservant wouldn’t be wasting his time idly sharing logic puzzles while she’s in mortal peril? Unless he was the architect of that peril…”

Beneath his villainous exterior, Hubert bristled at the assertion.

“But if you _were,”_ Claude added, “it would’ve been _pretty_ stupid of you to spoon-feed me the exact method you used to poison her and spirit her away.”

Hubert smirked. Astute as always.

“So, did you come here to accuse me or ask me for help?” Claude asked.

“Either way, you’d be of use to me,” Hubert answered.

“I guess I would, if I were willing to help.” Claude yet out a barely-stifled yawn. “Let me see… the only heir of Ionius von Hresvelg IX missing, plunging the Adrestian Empire into chaos over the question of his successor… power struggles, power vacuums, civil unrest… backstabbing, nailbiting, backbiting, nailstabbing…”

“If you have a point, Claude, please do come to it,” Hubert said, pouring as much sarcastic menace into _please_ as was humanly possible.

“Well, that all sounds like a pretty unpleasant situation to have in the Alliance’s backyard,” Claude finally concluded, “so I think I _will_ help you out. First, why don’t you tell me about that little vial you slipped into your pocket?” He grinned. “Let me guess—odorless, colorless, tasteless, and you found it on the chandelier in the dining hall over where Edelgard was sitting the other day?”

Hubert’s eyes narrowed. He had expected this, of course; nevertheless, the speed at which Claude figured things out was uncanny.

Knowing he’d been found out, he produced the vial. _“Polymorphus Muridae.”_

At the sound of that name, Claude’s jaw went slack and his mouth hung agape. He stared at Hubert’s upturned palm. “Got a lot of nerve bringing _that_ kinda stuff into a church, Hubert,” he muttered flippantly, belying his shaken expression.

“I don’t suppose you have any in your collection.”

“Of course not. If you have to cast a spell from some moldy old book to make a poison, it’s cheating.” Claude shook his head emphatically. “So… Edelgard got a dose of it and…”

“Yes. Frighteningly potent, isn’t it? If only this vial were full, you could destroy an entire army with it—”

“Nah.”

“What?”

Claude snatched up the vial and jiggled it, watching the meager trace of liquid pooling at the bottom slosh around. “Yeah, I’d never rely on _this_ to take down an army. It wouldn’t work. If you got _me_ with this stuff, I’d simply run up your trousers and bite off your unmentionables.” He handed the vial back to Hubert. “Now imagine threescore or more angry former humans doing the same to your soldiers.”

“Yes,” Hubert told him, “but what if you were to use it on somebody in, say, a monastery filled with cats?”

Claude blanched. “…Oh.”

And then in a flash he threw himself off the chair so quickly he nearly upended it and snatched an amber cloak from the floor, throwing it over his shoulders to cover up his pajamas. _“Why didn’t you say so earlier? We have to find her!”_

“Er… _we?”_

Claude clapped Hubert on the shoulders, a manic gleam in his eyes. “Come on! The game is afoot!”

And with that, he rushed from the room, dragging Hubert behind him with surprising strength given his lithe and slight build. Hubert wondered if there was enough poison left in that vial for him.

* * *

Bernadetta knew that something was wrong as soon as she woke up.

And no, it wasn’t the whiskers or the tail—after about a day, she’d started getting used to them, or at least used enough to them that they weren’t constantly taking her by surprise. It was the pillow under her head, the mattress under her belly, and the blanket over her back.

 _“Oh no,”_ she moaned to herself, pulling herself up and throwing off the blanket. There was no sharp morning sunlight to sting her eyes; the sky outside was a mass of roiling gray clouds that threatened rain. She looked down over the edge of her bed and there Edelgard was, curled up on her side on the floor, the half-cape draped over her shoulder crumpled beneath her. _“Oh no, oh Goddess no, oh Bernie, what have you_ done?”

This was all wrong. She’d gone to sleep on the floor last night, not Edelgard! She’d meant for Edelgard to take the bed instead! So if _she_ was on the bed, and _Edelgard_ was still on the floor, then that meant…

The bottom of her stomach dropped out. She must have crawled into bed in her sleep in the middle of the night and forced Edelgard onto the floor! Edelgard would _kill_ her when she woke up!

Wait. Edelgard was still fast asleep. Maybe it wasn’t too late to salvage this!

Bernadetta slipped off the bed and onto the floor and hauled Edelgard up into a sitting position, bracing her against her shoulder. The imperial princess’ head lolled limply to the side, her feathery white bangs plastered to her forehead, her hair sticking out at odd angles. _“…don’t take me… don’t let them… take me away…”_ she mumbled faintly, her lips slowly and painstakingly tracing whispers so quiet that they could only just barely be heard and her brow furrowing almost imperceptibly, as Bernadetta propped her against the side of the bed.

She froze, terrified that Edelgard was waking up, but after a dozen frantic heartbeats, the slumbering princess did not stir again, so she scurried back onto the bed, reached down and hooked her hands under her armpits, and hauled Edelgard onto the bed with all her might. By the Goddess, she was _heavy—_ or maybe it was just a matter of size (Byleth had trained Bernadetta enough with spears and javelins that she was usually taken aback by her own upper body strength, but in her current state, she was still getting used to how much more everything seemed to weigh).

_“…please… don’t hurt me…”_

Once again, Bernadetta found herself frozen in place while Edelgard’s weight strained her shoulders. Those were such familiar words—words she’d heard from her own mouth countless times before—but they sounded more alien than any foreign tongue because she was hearing them in _Edelgard’s_ voice. What kind of horrors filled her nightmares that even _she_ had to beg for mercy?

Her heart still hammering against her ribs, she pulled Edelgard onto the bed and rolled her onto her side as hastily as she could, then threw the blanket over her. Edelgard remained asleep; she even looked placid now. A faint smile tugged at the corner of her mouth as she settled into bed, as though the soft mattress and warm sheets had smothered whatever nightmare had been plaguing her.

Bernadetta sighed with relief. Crisis averted. She wasn’t going to be killed today. At least not over _this._

She crept over to her desk and set a few books down on the seat of her chair to make up for the height she’d lost. She was adjusting pretty well, in her opinion, to the whole mouse thing; it was really only inconvenient that she was at least a foot shorter now and colorblind. Once she’d gotten comfortable, or as comfortable as one could be while sitting on a pile of textbooks, she rummaged through her desk drawer and took out her sketchbook and charcoals. This whole incident was, roommate aside (it was always hard for her to focus on creative endeavors, especially writing, when there was even the _possibility_ of someone looking over her shoulder), a golden opportunity for her to catch up with her hobbies. Really, she may as well call it a vacation!

She lit a candle on the desk to provide some illumination to the gloomy room and flipped through her sketchbook. Most of the drawings in the first few dozen pages were speculative—sketches of plants and animals she’d only read about, brought to some semblance of life by the (often frustratingly-sparse) prose in the books she’d read describing them. Since arriving at Garreg Mach, she’d also filled the book’s pages with plants from the greenhouse, cats loitering around the campus, and beasts encountered on her assignments with the rest of the class. Here and there were more fanciful things: creatures from mythology, dragons and demons, creatures of her own design, and a few extremely embarrassing illustrations from one of her stories (they were just as good as her other drawings, which was to say they were okay, but if anybody else saw them she would die on the spot).

Turning to a blank page and tapping a thin, fine stick of charcoal against it, drawing a few aimless half-shapes in the corners to get a feel for how much bigger her tools felt in her hands, she racked her brain for a subject. Her eyes eventually fell on the little mirror lying on the windowsill.

She’d never bothered with a self-portrait before (why would she? she had a mirror; she knew what she looked like already), but what better subject for a sketchbook full of strange creatures?

* * *

Edelgard knew that something was wrong as soon as she woke up.

It was the pillow resting just barely under her cheek, the mattress settling underneath her, the blanket draped over her shoulder. It wasn’t that she was sleeping in a bed that wasn’t hers insomuch as she was sleeping in a bed _at all._

The rain tapping relentlessly with an arrhythmic tattoo on the window chased the last vestiges of sleep from her mind. She groggily sat up, letting the blanket slough off her shoulder and drape itself over her lap as the last vestiges of her dream bled away from her waking mind. Her mussed and disheveled bangs cast a blurry, hazy veil over her eyes; she brushed them aside. What had she done to end up here? Had she been sleepwalking? Had she unconsciously ousted Bernadetta from her own bed while in the throes of the usual nightmare? And after the effort she’d made to carry her there, too…

Poor thing. As though she wasn’t suffering enough already.

Edelgard slipped out of bed, yawning as she stretched the minor aches of rough sleeping from her arms and legs. The blanket followed her and pooled on the floor around her feet. In addition to her hair feeling like an eagle had picked it out for a nest, the tasseled epaulets and ornaments on her blouse were all askew, her cape was in desperate need of ironing, and her tights felt like they had been glued to her skin. The thought struck her that at this moment she’d gladly exchange her claim to the throne for a change of clothes, a bath, and a comb.

She shook her head as if to drive the thought from her head. To have her life confined to a single room again was already getting to her. Even she still had a weakness for creature comforts, and she was feeling especially weak for them now.

Bernadetta was fast asleep, slumped over at her desk with a furry cheek pressed against the open page of one of her books and a mirror propped up against the wall. Though it still made Edelgard queasy to look upon her, her appearance was not quite so frightening in broad daylight. Yet she had to ask herself if she had the fortitude to carry her back to bed instead of taking it as a given. It was almost comical—she could all but cleave a man in half with a swing of an axe or take a shot at a Demonic Beast ten times her size without flinching, but a little furry thing was enough to leave her weak in the knees.

Mice. Why mice? Why not squirrels or ferrets or rabbits? She was fine around those things. If one could make a poison that turned people into mice, wouldn’t any other animal be just as feasible? What if she could transform soldiers into eagles and have them scout out their enemy with no fear of being detected? Or if she could have spies play the part of stray cats or dogs and tail their targets with unparalleled ease? The possibilities were endless.

She would have to ask Hubert about it. Such a poison could be of inestimable value to the Adrestian Empire.

Bernadetta stirred and pulled her head up, yawning and inadvertently baring her long, blunt fangs. “Good morning, Edelgard,” she mumbled sleepily.

“Oh, er—good morning,” Edelgard answered tersely.

“I’m sorry,” Bernadetta immediately answered, slamming the book shut and hastily stuffing it in her drawer as though it contained something illicit. There she was again with the apologies. What in the world made her so skittish? When Edelgard had first heard rumors of the reclusive daughter of the Count of Varley, she had been surprised to hear that the count’s child had not inherited his forceful personality.

“Did you, um… did you sleep well?” Bernadetta asked.

“I didn’t sleep poorly,” Edelgard answered noncommittally.

“I’m sorry,” Bernadetta said again.

“There’s no need to apologize. I’m grateful that you would host me—”

“I didn’t mean to kick you out of bed, Lady Edelgard, I swear, I must have been sleepwalking and—”

“Kick me out? No, I slept on the floor. Bernadetta, I owe _you_ an apology—”

“I’m sorry, I don’t know what happened, I went to sleep on the floor and woke up in bed—” both Edelgard and Bernadetta said in perfect unison.

An awkward silence blanketed the room as both of them looked at each other, equally dumbfounded.

“I woke up in the middle of the night—” Edelgard explained.

“Please forgive me,” Bernadetta pleaded, burying her face in her paws and muffling her voice. “I didn’t do it on purpose, I swear—”

“No, please—Bernadetta, you aren’t listening—”

“Just—please, if you can find it in your heart—”

“Stop talking over me, Bernadetta,” Edelgard said. “Listen to what I’m _saying,_ not what you’re afraid to hear.” She spoke slowly, as though comforting an injured beast. “I woke up in the middle of the night on the floor— _which is where I went to sleep, of my own free will, through no fault of your own_ —and thought you must have fallen out of bed yourself, so I picked you up and carried you back.”

“I, uh…” Bernadetta uncovered her face and bowed her head in shame, kneading the hem of her blouse. “I meant to sleep on the floor so that you could have the bed. So when I woke up this morning and _I_ was in bed, I thought I’d forced you out in my sleep, so I pulled you back up and…”

“Oh.”

“Oh.”

Edelgard cupped her hand over her mouth and nose to stifle her inadvertent snort of laughter. Bernadetta giggled uncomfortably.

“Thank you,” Edelgard said. “That was kind of you.”

“You can sleep in my bed if you want,” Bernadetta told her. “It’s fine. Really. I’m used to the floor. I’ve slept in worse places…”

Edelgard looked down at Bernadetta, and in an instant, she saw something different in her place. Something that called to mind one of Hubert’s many abortive attempts to cure her of her phobia.

‘Look at them,’ he had said to her, gesturing to a wire mesh cage he’d brought her filled with trembling rats all clustered in one corner, ‘and think rationally. See? They mean you no harm. They are more frightened of _you_ than you are of _them.’_

Though she’d appreciated the gesture (once she’d stopped screaming and he’d begrudgingly set the cage aside and tossed a black cloth over it), she hadn’t believed him. Her first and only thought had been that he had simply tortured the rats to make them seem afraid of her. Here, now, though, those long-past words echoing in her head finally rang true.

“I wouldn’t dream of asking, let alone demanding to take that from you,” she consoled Bernadetta. “Your bed belongs to _you._ You may keep it—I, too, have slept in worse places.”

She considered offering to her a gentle pat on the head or shoulder and immediately un-considered it. The thought, however brief, still made her skin crawl. She would have to work her way up to that.

“Thank you,” Bernadetta said. “You’re too kind, Lady Edelgard.”

“Did you make these yourself?” Edelgard asked, gesturing to the plants sewn out of felt that rested on the desk. Or, at least, she thought they were plants.

“Uh… yeah. They’re not very good, are they?”

“They’re interesting. I’m impressed with the stitching,” she said, running her finger along a seam. The craftsmanship was much finer than anything she’d accomplished, and she inwardly marveled at how Bernadetta had sculpted such an intricate design out of felt and cotton. “I never had the patience for sewing. These are plants, aren’t they?”

A skilled archer, and on top of that, she apparently had considerable talents in sewing, drawing, painting, and writing? Though her demeanor belied it, Bernadetta certainly was a wunderkind.

“Um… yes, carnivorous plants. That one’s a Duscur pitcher plant,” Bernadetta said, growing steadily more enthusiastic, “and the other one’s an Almyran flytrap. Instead of getting their nutrients from the soil and sunlight, they eat insects! They use acid to dissolve their prey; the pitcher eats them down to the last bit, but the flytrap leaves behind a dried-out, empty husk! I—” She halted, as though suddenly aware she’d crossed some invisible threshold of excitement, and when she resumed speaking, her voice was quieter and more measured. “I’ll shut up now,” she added meekly.

“No, I was interested,” Edelgard assured her. “Do go on.”

“I-I like them. They aren’t the prettiest plants—rather plain, actually—but… I like how they just sit there and let their food come to them.”

“I see. So the two of us have become a pair of carnivorous plants ourselves, then.”

Bernadetta smiled a bit.

“I suppose you wouldn’t have much luck growing something so exotic in the greenhouse here,” Edelgard added. “Did you have any of these at home?”

“Oh, um… no. I’ve only read about them.” Bernadetta began to casually tweak the tip of her tail. The way she projected such nonchalance about her new form both unsettled and impressed Edelgard.

“You’ve adjusted to this,” she pointed out.

“To not having any real pitcher plants?”

“No, to… er… _this.”_

“Oh, _this.”_ Bernadetta scratched behind her ear. “Well, I’ve always been fascinated by strange creatures,” she said, “and now I guess I _am_ one. And I guess I’ve always, well… I’ve always been sort of been a mouse on the inside, so it’s a natural fit. Maybe I’m a hideous little monster, but at least I’m not plain anymore,” she added with a heartbreakingly self-deprecating little chuckle.

“Anyone else would be frightened in your position,” Edelgard admitted. “I’m… proud of you.”

“Proud?” Bernadetta let out a nervous bark of laughter. “Of me? Y-You’re just saying that.”

Edelgard considered telling her that she didn’t ‘just say’ anything, but it would not only be a lie, but also a pointless thing to say; half of the words one spoke to Bernadetta simply fell on deaf ears as her overactive imagination simply concocted new, far less charitable words to replace them. She decided that if she had any praise for her from now on, she would have to use twice as many words to make up for the deficit.

There was a soft knock at the door. _“Hello, Bern? Are you awake?”_

This morning, the strong, lyrical voice on the other side of the door belonged to Dorothea, who—like the rest of the Black Eagles—knew full well what was going on in here. Nonetheless, Bernadetta immediately leaped across the room and buried herself under her bedsheets.

There was another knock at the door. Edelgard darted forward to unlock and pull it ever so slightly ajar, then darted behind it. As the door creaked open, she hewed close to the wall so that nobody watching from outside could glimpse her.

Dorothea made sure to close the door firmly behind her before saying anything more. “Good mo—heavens, is it past noon already?”

“Is it?” Edelgard asked. She had no sense of the passage of time beyond sunrise and sunset anymore, and with the sky as cloudy as it was now, even that was nebulous. Had she and Bernadetta both slept through breakfast?

“Well, I hope you and Bern are enjoying your little vacation, Edie. Speaking of, where is she?”

Edelgard gestured to the lump on the bed.

“Oh. Someone’s got a case of stage fright, I see.” Dorothea took a seat on the side of the bed and rested her hand on the lump, slowly and soothingly running her fingers back and forth across the arc it traced under the sheets. “Bern? It’s me, Dorothea. You don’t have to hide from me.”

The lump wriggled and shifted.

“Oh, don’t be so nervous. I’m sure you’re a very pretty mouse, Bernadetta,” Dorothea assured her. “You were pretty enough as a human; I’m sure you haven’t lost any of your charm. Come on. Let me see. We’re friends, aren’t we?”

At last, the lump relented and Bernadetta emerged from her cocoon. “…Hi, Dorothea,” she mumbled, a nervous smile tugging at her mouth.

As soon as she caught sight of her, Dorothea pounced on her like a fox that had caught sight of its prey. “Oh, Bern, _look_ at you!” she cooed, wrapping her arms around her and sweeping her into her lap. “You _adorable_ little thing!”

Bernadetta let out a yelp and squirmed in her iron grip. _“Dorothea—please—”_ she squeaked.

Cowed, Dorothea sheepishly released her grip on Bernadetta, her rosy cheeks growing rosier as she lifted a hand to her chest. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what came over me,” she mumbled. “I mean, Caspar told us all what to expect, but I just wasn’t prepared…”

“I-It’s fine,” Bernadetta said, relaxing and resting her head against Dorothea’s shoulder.

“I’ll tell you what, if _I_ ever somehow turn into a tiny mouse girl,” Dorothea told her, laying a much gentler hand on her head and affectionately tousling her hair, “you can hug and squeeze _me_ half to death. Then we’ll be even!”

“I’ll hold you to that promise,” Edelgard said.

“I wouldn’t expect anything less,” Dorothea said. “Now, I was going to bring you two something special, but Ferdie _insisted_ on taking care of lunch for the both of you,” she added, absentmindedly running her fingers through Bernadetta’s disheveled mop of violet hair and scratching behind her ear as though she were a pet cat. Bernadetta relaxed further, sinking deeper into her embrace and closing her eyes—she seemed much more willing to accept such treatment from Dorothea as opposed to Flayn. It hadn’t occurred to Edelgard that the two of them were friends—that Bernadetta had _any_ friends, really. “He’ll be coming around soon. I think he—Edie, why are you looking at me like that? You seem almost _relieved.”_

Edelgard hadn’t been aware she’d been looking at Dorothea ‘like that,’ but she had to admit that she _was_ relieved. Dorothea was infamous for her lack of taste. Her guiding philosophy when doing even so much as frying an egg was that all food was the same once it had reached the stomach, so what did it matter whether it tasted good, or even whether it was edible at all?

“It’s just that I’m not very hungry yet, I suppose,” she lied.

“Hmm.” Dorothea pursed her lips thoughtfully. “Are you sure you’re holding up okay? You don’t quite look yourself.”

“I’m well aware of that,” Edelgard replied, feeling grossly inadequate, or perhaps merely gross. Dorothea certainly took great pains to maintain her appearance, from her smooth and clear skin to her neatly manicured nails to the seemingly effortlessly-maintained loose curls her lustrous brown hair shaped itself into; while Edelgard typically put forth just as great an effort to present herself well, that option was not available to her now.

“Just a tic. I’ve got to get something from my room. I’ll be right back,” Dorothea said, releasing her much-lighter grip on Bernadetta and hurrying for the door.

She wasn’t gone long (her room was next door) and returned soon with a bundle of clothes draped over one arm and a hairbrush in her hand. “Ah, here we go. Edie, I know you’re not quite my size, but I’ve got a spare nightgown you can wear here—it might be a little long and a little loose around your chest, but…”

Edelgard was more than happy to take it from her. It was a simple scarlet nightgown, hardly of the highest quality fabric or stitching, but it was luxurious compared to the comfort the uniform she’d worn for two days straight now offered her. “Thank you, Dorothea. I trust you’ll offer me some privacy while I change?”

“Well, of course,” Dorothea said, sweeping the blanket off the floor and holding it up in front of Edelgard to form an impromptu curtain. “Your own changing room, milady.”

It was hardly ideal, but thanks to the Officers Academy’s rigorous hands-on curriculum Edelgard had changed her clothes in far less ideal environments than this; the gratitude she felt once she’d peeled her clothes off vastly outweighed any embarrassment she might have felt. Compared to her uniform, the borrowed nightgown felt as though she were wearing a cloud, even if it _was_ too loose around her chest and the hem dragged on the floor.

“Thank you, Dorothea.”

“I thought you might appreciate this, too,” Dorothea said once she was finished, handing Edelgard the hairbrush. “Feels good to make yourself look presentable, doesn’t it? Even if you don’t have anywhere to go.”

Edelgard went to work on taming her hair. “Thank you. How’s Hubert’s investigation going?”

“It’s… well… it’s going.” Dorothea fiddled anxiously with one of her rings. Few students wore more finery than her—Edelgard wondered if she were overcompensating for her common upbringing. “Everyone knows you’re missing now, so everyone’s searching for you, although the weather isn’t exactly making it easy. Hubie’s keeping his cards close to his chest like always, but he doesn’t seem perturbed by any of this. That’s actually… reassuring, somehow.”

“I see.” As much as she trusted him, Edelgard wondered if perhaps Hubert had bitten off more than he could chew this time. If he didn’t find the culprit by tonight, things might get out of hand. What if news of her disappearance made it to Enbarr while she was still holed up in here? Would the gluttonous nobles who had already robbed her father of so much loosen their belts and ready their plates for seconds?

“What if they search this room?” Bernadetta asked, grabbing herself by the arms. Her claws dug into her sleeves. “They, um… If they see me, they’ll…”

“I’m sure Professor Byleth will do everything she can to direct attention away from this room,” Dorothea said with a wink. “She’s searching the dormitories right now, actually, and I’m sure she’ll search _this_ one extra hard.”

“It would be worse for them to find _me,”_ Edelgard pointed out. “Then we’d have to answer a lot of uncomfortable questions about why I’ve been pretending to be dead.”

“Right. Guess it’s stupid for me to worry about myself…” Bernadetta muttered in a way that was at once both petulant and earnestly self-deprecating. “Myopic, selfish Bernie…”

“Oh, Bern, it’s okay,” Dorothea said, gently petting her. “You don’t have to be afraid of anyone finding you! Even if you’re a mouse, you’re still our classmate. We can just take your clothes to a tailor and have the blacksmith make you a smaller bow, and it’ll be like nothing’s changed. There might even be a benefit to have you on the battlefield—you’re too _cute_ for anyone to want to fight you!”

Bernadetta withered a little. Edelgard wondered if she was blushing under her ashy gray-brown fur. A full charm offensive from Dorothea could be overwhelming even to people with stoic hearts, let alone someone as sensitive as her.

* * *

If there was one bright side to the ugly weather, it was that it significantly depressed the rest of the faculty’s search efforts, leaving Hubert and Claude especially free to conduct their own investigation.

The grounds of the Officers Academy had been transformed by the heavy rainfall into a slick slurry of mud and grass. Water gurgled down gutters and dripped steadily from the eaves of the old, worn buildings. Anyone who could stay indoors today did.

There wasn’t much investigative work to do outside, anyway—there couldn’t be in this rain, which would so effectively wash away any ephemeral stains, footprints, traces of hair or blood. No, the reason why Hubert was spending so much time in transit through the courtyard instead of traversing the dry and cozy halls to go to and fro in the monastery was to frustrate Claude.

He suspected Claude, but only slightly more than the baseline level of suspicion he reserved for everyone save for Edelgard. He knew that Claude suspected him, too, even though he’d made his innocence clear—after all, who _wouldn’t_ suspect Hubert von Vestra, whose sinister affectation made it so abundantly clear that he planned to follow in the footsteps of his villain of a father?

One of the problems of treating everything like a game of three-dimensional chess, Hubert often thought, was that you started acting as though everybody else was, too. It was a lonely way to live. But if the loneliness was in service of Edelgard, he would grin and bear it.

Claude glided behind him in his wax-treated coat, a thin-lipped scowl plastered on his hooded face. Hubert realized soon enough that Claude was mocking his own perpetual scowl. “Stop that,” he said.

Claude’s scowl shattered into a toothy, winning smile. “Stop what?” he asked innocently.

“Imitating me.”

“I’m just trying to get inside your head.”

“You’re not welcome.”

“Huh.” Claude chuckled. “Could’ve sworn I saw a vacancy sign out front.”

Hubert didn’t deign to respond.

While planning for an opportunity to dump Claude (or possibly incapacitate him), Hubert’s eye wandered across the courtyard, through the sheets of rain pattering on the lawn and rustling the rosebushes, seizing upon the sight of a familiar face staring at him from under the shade of the gazebo. As it happened, the face belonged to someone he was quite keen on interrogating—the odd, fey redhead, Edelgard’s newfound ‘friend’ Monica von Ochs.

Hubert and Edelgard both knew full well that her name was not actually Monica von Ochs. There had once been a girl named Monica von Ochs—a student at the Officers Academy—but she had gone missing a year ago; after a lengthy search that had found not a single trace of her, she was presumed to have run away. In reality, she had been kidnapped and killed by the shadowy cabal of those who slither in the dark, and her doppelganger had slipped into the monastery as an unexpected ‘bonus’ when Byleth and the Black Eagles had rescued Flayn from the Death Knight.

That girl with rose-red hair and blood-red eyes and a smile like a knife was one of the slitherers, an assassin by trade and by birth. She had perfected Monica’s shape down to the slightest detail of her face, but made no effort to replicate her personality. No matter—other students and faculty simply chalked up her odd behavior to trauma from her ‘kidnapping.’

Of course, if Hubert wanted to have an honest conversation with her, there was the matter of his quote-unquote ‘assistant’ to deal with…

 _“Claude!”_ he hissed, grabbing him by the arm and pointing off into the rosebushes. _“There! I just saw a white mouse!”_

“Got it!” Claude called out, bounding across the courtyard, his boots kicking up waves from the muddy puddles dotting the campus. Hubert couldn’t ask for a more eager display and felt very satisfied in himself as he slipped into the gazebo and cornered the girl named Monica von Ochs, backing her into the corner and planting both hands on the railing behind her to pin her down.

“Hello, Kronya,” he growled, looming over her.

Kronya smiled, unfazed by his aura of wicked intent. “Well, well, well, Hubes. Looking for Edel, I take it?”

“Who else would I be looking for?”

“Good question.” Kronya sighed. “Oh, I hope you find her soon. The nobles over at Enbarr are so cutthroat. One could almost think all the power they stole from the Emperor in the Insurrection of the Seven wasn’t enough to satisfy their gluttony. If she stays missing for too long…”

“I take it you have no idea where she is.”

“Of course not.”

“And you wouldn’t know anything about anyone else who might have taken her?”

“Most certainly not.”

“And,” Hubert said, producing his nearly-empty vial from his pocket and holding it in front of her, “this little vial doesn’t look familiar to you?”

Kronya’s eyes narrowed. “It’s a little plain. What’s that in it? Water?” Despite being an assassin, she wasn’t much for poisons, evidently—she prefered well-placed daggers.

_“Polymorphus Muridae.”_

_“That?”_ Kronya asked, squinting and crossing her arms. She seemed almost offended. “You _know_ I wouldn’t touch that stuff, Hubes.”

“Do I?” Hubert shot back, pocketing the vial. “I hardly _know_ you at all.”

“Why in the world would I leave my targets for _someone else_ to kill? It’s just sloppy work.” She turned up her nose. “But we _have_ been making use of that blend for… other things.”

“Other things?”

“Surely you’ve thought about how poor it is for assassinations,” Kronya said. “Maybe, just maybe, it keeps getting called ‘poison’ so that people who read about it won’t realize what it’s _really_ used for.”

Hubert nodded. He’d suspected there was more going on here for a while now, and now that suspicion was coalescing into something far more concrete. “Infiltration.”

“That’s right!” Kronya gave him a simpering, patronizing smile. “How many, ahem, ‘mice’ do you think we’ve snuck into the monastery?”

“Then why was Lady Edelgard targeted?”

“I don’t know,” she snapped. “Do I _look_ like I did it?”

Hubert conjured a ball of miasma and let it sit in his upturned palm, leaning closer to Kronya and letting the flickering tongues of black and violet flame cast bleak light and deep shadow across her false face. “We both know how deceiving looks can be.”

Kronya rolled her eyes, unthreatened by his display (or at least pretending that she was unthreatened). “Turning people into mice isn’t _my_ job, Hubes.”

“Then whose job _is_ it?”

“Another one of our agents. His name is Vejovis.”

The name wasn’t familiar to Hubert. Not among the student body, not among the faculty, not among the Church of Seiros or its knights stationed here. “His real name, I take it. Whose identity has he assumed?”

“Oh, I’m not sure. I think his name is… von Barlowe. Albus von Barlowe.”

That name didn’t ring much of a bell, either, though it certainly sounded more familiar to Hubert than ‘Vejovis.’

“Nice guy.” Kronya gave him a snakelike smile. “Flammable.”

Hubert wondered if Vejovis might have something to do with this. But if he was a supplier of the poison for the rest of those who slither in the dark, then surely he’d have no need to ransack someone else’s collection. There were still so many things here that didn’t add up. And besides, as much of an uneasy alliance as it was, these shadowy devils and Edelgard were walking on the same path for the time being.

It did establish what he suspected, though. They knew of this poison and were using it here. Surely there had to be some agent among them who had decided to break ranks and go after Edelgard.

After all, he mused darkly, turning her into a mouse would hardly be the _worst_ thing they had tried to do to her.

“Do any among your number have any… grievances against Lady Edelgard?” he asked.

Kronya chuckled. “Do we have all day?”

“Excuse me?”

“Well… how do I say this? There’s been a… schism,” she said. “Some of us are starting to see Edel as a liability—and maybe not quite worth the trouble of working with. Just because the Flame Emperor is Thales’ darling…”

Hubert masked his disgust. He should have expected nothing less from those who slither in the dark. But a _schism—_ an open, festering wound in the organization’s hierarchy, splitting it between those who were only aligned with Edelgard in fair weather and those who openly opposed her—that was worse than he had expected. One or two malcontents, perhaps, but…

“Some of us think if we took open control of the Empire and did away with the Hresvelg line altogether,” Kronya said, “our plans would more easily come to fruition.”

“And are _you_ on that side of the schism?” Hubert asked.

Kronya examined her fingernails. “How about you make a case for me to stick with you and Edel, Hubes?”

Hubert scowled.

Kronya laughed. “Oh, don’t be like that. Smile a little! I’m _obviously_ joking. We’re besties!”

Hubert seriously doubted that. If Kronya had been waving a red flag before, now she had a target painted on her back.

“At least tell me,” Hubert said, restraining himself but channeling just a bit more magic into the orb of black mist hovering in his palm to let her know he was not to be trifled with, “which of your fellow agents here are on the wrong side of the schism.”

“That’s a matter of perspective, isn’t it?”

“You know what I mean.”

“Solon’s still on your side, I think,” Kronya said. “Call it a fifty-fifty chance. Not great odds, but better than zero. There’s one other guy I know is against you, though.” She took a deep breath. “He’s—”

_“Hey! Hubert!”_

Hubert glanced over his shoulder to see Claude barreling toward him at full tilt through the rain, his hands cupped and held close to his chest. _“Hubert!”_ he shouted out, skidding to a halt at the front of the gazebo as Hubert hurriedly extinguished his dark fireball and turned around to face him. _“I found it!”_

He all but shoved his hands under Hubert’s nose and cracked them open, revealing a little white mouse curled up in his palms like a pearl nestled in the mouth of a clam. _“Is it her?”_ he gasped.

Hubert was shocked. He had been lying through his teeth when he’d told Claude he’d seen a white mouse, but the madman had gone and found one anyway. Sometimes it felt as though the universe bent to his will.

He snatched the mouse out of Claude’s hands and held it firmly, pinching it by the scruff of its neck and pretending to take great pains to examine it from every angle as it wriggled and squeaked. Of course it wasn’t her, but Claude didn’t know that. He at least had to pretend to figure it out.

“No,” he said after much deliberation, setting the squirming rodent back into Claude’s hands.

“You sure?” Claude asked, his mouth and brows curling into a skeptical frown.

“Give it a closer look; you’ll see.”

Claude _did_ give it a closer look. “Oh. How did I not notice that?” He set the mouse down and let it scamper back into the wet, muddy grass. “Sorry about that, little fella,” he told it. “Hey, Hubert, weren’t you talking to someone just now?”

Hubert returned his attention to Kronya and found himself staring at an empty gazebo.

He had a feeling this would be the last time he or anyone else would see Monica von Ochs.

* * *

“Why am _I_ doing this with you instead of Dorothea?” Caspar pouted as he worked the lock to the apothecary’s backdoor.

“Because Hubert told me you can pick locks,” Linhardt said. “Honestly, Caspar, I’m surprised. I didn’t think you had it in you.”

Caspar groaned inwardly. Hubert was _actively_ trying to ruin his life now.

He and Linhardt had had a miserable journey into town, to say the least. Halfway there, the faint drizzle falling from the ocean of clouds filling the sky from horizon to horizon had become a downpour and it had stayed that way well into the afternoon, showing no signs of letting up anytime soon.

The two of them hid at the back of the apothecary’s dilapidated shop, still standing in the downpour; their wax-coated cloaks kept them at least mostly dry, but didn’t keep out all the cold. Caspar hewed closely to the door, the minuscule few inches of awning overhead offering meager shelter from the rain; Linhardt was not so lucky.

“Sometimes, to beat a thief, you have to be an even bigger thief,” Caspar said. “That said… I dunno about this. The apothecary’s just some old dude; he doesn’t have ties to the black market.”

“Maybe he _does._ That’s why we need to check his ledger.”

Linhardt was usually a pretty smart guy, even if he did spend half of his time in class (and out of it) asleep, so Caspar was shocked to hear him say something so stupid. “But it’s illegal to sell black market goods. He wouldn’t just write it down in his ledger!”

“No, not his _ledger_ ledger—his other, _secret_ ledger. He still needs to make money off his business and make sure he’s making _enough_ money. He has to make sure his suppliers aren’t cheating him and his clients aren’t taking advantage of him. And if he’s ever found out, having a list of buyers and sellers to rat out can inspire the Knights of Seiros to be, er, lenient toward him.”

“Uh-huh. And what’s gonna inspire the Knights of Seiros to be, er, lenient toward _us?”_

“My charm and dashing good looks, of course,” Linhardt said. Right now, he didn’t have much of either; in spite of his cloak’s hood, his forest-green hair was thoroughly soaked and plastered to his skin.

Not exactly heartened, Caspar directed his attention back toward the lock, pressing his ear against the door to hear its mechanisms as he fiddled with the two bent hairpins he’d inserted into the lock. Lockpicking was a delicate art that required a lot of focus and attention to detail. The tiniest noise, the tiniest shift of the tiniest little part of the lock’s tiniest mechanisms could be the key to victory.

“Maybe if you inserted the wires with more of a… downward force,” Linhardt suggested.

“I got it, I got it.” It was hard enough to focus on the lock’s subtle shifting with the gutters gurgling overhead. The last thing he needed was any sort of advice.

“No, no, more _downward._ Like this.”

Caspar glanced over his shoulder to see Linhardt doing something stupid with his arms. “What, has Ashe been giving _you_ lessons, too?”

“No, I’m just… observing your technique and making some suggestions.”

Caspar rolled his eyes and pushed himself back into his work. Linhardt was _always_ doing this. Telling Petra how to use a spear despite so much as picking one up maybe _once_ in his entire life, giving suggestions about breath control to Dorothea while she practiced her vocal exercises… Caspar was certain that he’d even tell a pregnant woman how to give birth if, Goddess forbid, he ever _married_.

“Try more downward force,” Linhardt pleaded.

Caspar did so, if only so that Linhardt would shut up, and within half a minute he’d gotten the lock open.

As the door swung open, Linhardt pumped his fist. “See? What did I tell you?”

“Let’s just get this over with. But if we don’t find a secret ledger, you owe me big.” Caspar slipped into the apothecary’s backroom. “Where would he be hiding it, anyway?”

The backroom was a tight and winding labyrinth of shelves stretching from floor to ceiling, with just enough room between the dusty shelves for one person to comfortably slip by; he and Linhardt had to creep single-file through the room, past the rows and rows of bottled tonics and potions and drawers full of dried herbs and mummified husks of insects and other small critters. Cobwebs were everywhere. Worn-down nubs of candles periodically lined the shelves, dripping globs of wax and leaving tiny white puddles on the floor.

“This place,” Linhardt grumbled, his boots squelching with every step, “is a fire hazard. Thank the Goddess it’s raining.”

“Yeah. Thanks, Goddess. Always looking out for us.” Caspar dragged his finger along one of the shelves and left a wet streak on the wood; his fingertip came away fuzzy with a thick layer of gray dust. He wiped it on his trousers. “You sure about this?”

“The apothecary takes an hour for lunch every day around this time,” Linhardt said. “We’ve still got at least half an hour to get in and get out.”

“You’d better be sure about that. So, if you were this guy, where would _you_ hide a secret ledger?”

“Wherever he keeps the not-so-secret ledger. When you find the white market ledger, you won’t think to look in the same place for the black market one.”

“I guess that makes sense. And where would he keep _that?”_

“At his desk, of course.”

The two of them didn’t find a desk in the backroom—just more tight corridors between the looming shelves—but they did find a flight of rickety stairs leading down to a cellar, and in the cellar they found what could only be the apothecary’s living quarters. There was a bed in the corner, a pantry, a bookshelf, a cluttered and tightly-packed kitchen area, a fireplace, and last but not least, a desk.

“Bingo,” Caspar said, making a beeline for the desk.

“He _lives_ down here?” Linhardt asked himself, illuminating the cellar with a conjured ball of fire. “How does he stand it? It’s so _stuffy.”_

Caspar pulled open the desk’s drawer and pulled out a little black leather book, its pages filled with names and numbers and sums in tiny, tight handwriting. He had to squint to read it, and the flickering light from Linhardt’s fireball hindered about as much as it helped.

“This is the real one,” he surmised after looking through the items column on various pages and seeing nothing but perfectly innocuous tinctures, tonics, vulneraries, and concoctions. The names were a mix of total strangers from the village and the occasional familiar name from the Church or the academy’s faculty.

He searched the rest of the drawer and pulled out a few spare inkwells, a couple worn and weathered quill pens, sheaves of loose scratch paper, and all sorts of other bric-a-brac, piling it all on the desk until the drawer was empty.

No secret ledger.

Caspar sighed, frustrated.

“Maybe the drawer has a false bottom,” Linhardt suggested.

“Maybe _you_ have a false bottom,” Caspar muttered as he felt around the inside of the drawer for a seam or something. He brushed aside a stray bit of twine lying in the drawer, only to find that it wouldn’t budge.

Aha! He grabbed the twine and tugged on it; just as he’d expected, the bottom of the drawer popped off to reveal another black leather book. “Jackpot!” Caspar cried out, triumphantly slamming the book on the desk and opening it. “Lin, gimme Hubert’s list.”

Linhardt set Hubert’s journal on the table and opened it to the list of ingredients for the poison and its antidote. Caspar scanned the ledger and compared it to the lists. Sure enough, a few pages in, he started seeing matches. He followed the items to the names…

“Holy shit,” he whispered.

Linhardt looked over his shoulder. “What? What is it?”

“The buyer, it’s…” Caspar found a lump forming in his throat. No, it couldn’t be. It was _ludicrous._ “It’s… _von Ochs. It’s Edelgard’s friend, Monica!”_

 _“What?”_ Linhardt gasped. “But—But she _can’t_ be… Edelgard _rescued_ her, _we_ rescued her—”

“That’s what Ferdinand thought, too,” Caspar muttered darkly. He _knew_ he’d had a bad feeling about her. He shoved the book back into the drawer and replaced the false bottom. “C’mon, we’ve gotta get going. Gotta warn Hubert, and Edelgard too!”

 _“Edelgard? So she_ hasn’t _gone missing, then,”_ a rough, raspy voice slithered through the gloom. _“How interesting…”_

Caspar whirled around. “Who’s there—”

The apothecary strode down the stairs, each step creaking and moaning under his boots. No, it _wasn’t_ the apothecary, but _almost_ the apothecary. He looked nearly the same, down to the wrinkles furrowing his brow, the wild and bristly salt-and-pepper hair and beard, the glasses with lenses as thick as history books, but his skin was so pale it was almost translucent and black runes comprised of sharp and angular lines ran across his wrinkled face. Behind his glasses, his eyes were a pure, blind white.

The ball of flame in Linhardt’s upturned palm fluttered angrily as he aimed his outstretched hand at the apothecary’s doppelganger, throwing flickering amber light against his smooth face. “Out of our way, or I’ll blast you,” he warned.

“You’re too late; we’ve seen everything,” Caspar added. “We know you’re selling illegal goods, and we’re going straight to the Knights of Seiros with it!”

With that, he charged at the apothecary, fists clenched, arm drawn back like a bowstring stretched taut. This old creep may have been blocking the only exit—but not for long!

The apothecary smiled and silently admonished him with a paternal wag of his finger.

A flash of light ignited the air as an arcane circle traced itself in light on the floor. The next thing Caspar knew, something was sucking at his boots, rooting him in place like thick, viscous mud; he nearly wrenched his feet out of his boots altogether from the momentum still carrying him forward as he struggled to pull himself free. Something cold and slick wrapped around his arm and wrenched it backward, grinding the socket in his shoulder like a millstone. He gritted his teeth to bite back a scream as another cold tendril wrapped itself around his other arm, then his legs, then curled around his neck just firmly enough to hurt, but not to choke him. It throbbed with his pulse.

The room was plunged into darkness for a moment, then lit by flickering tongues of amber flame from the candles lining the cellar’s stone walls.

Caspar fought against his bonds to no avail. _“Lin—”_ he gasped, struggling to move anything but his eyeballs. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Linhardt just as bound as he was by slithering black and violet tendrils, sunk up to his knees in a pool of shadow to boot. “Who the hell are you?” he spat at the apothecary.

“Me?” The devilish apothecary cocked his head curiously. “Why, I am the town’s apothecary. What was his name again… oh, bother, I keep forgetting… Albus, I believe? Hello again, by the way, ‘Lin Manuel-Miranda,’” he said to Linhardt. “How nice to see you again. You should’ve brought your wife this time, too.”

“Yeah, you should’ve,” Caspar muttered at Linhardt. If nothing else, then _he_ wouldn’t be here, and also, Dorothea would have probably lightninged this creep to death by now.

“Oh, oh dear, but what to do now…” ‘Albus’ muttered. “Of course, I can’t let you two leave. You’ve… how does the saying go? Seen too much?”

“Well, if you’re going to kill us,” Linhardt said, “you might as well tell us your whole plan before we die.”

“Hmm.” Albus stroked his beard. “No.”

“Someday that’ll work,” Linhardt muttered.

“Besides, I _do_ detest having blood on my hands. I prefer to… what’s the word? Outsource?”

“We’ll never tell you where Edelgard is,” Caspar spat, struggling against the tendrils wrapped around him. His shoulder screamed bloody murder, though, and quickly put a stop to his squirming. The joint was damn near dislocated.

Albus rummaged in the pouch slung over his shoulder for a tiny stoppered vial and an even tinier eyedropper. “We have ways of making you talk. But, of course, we don’t _need_ that—there are so few places she can hide; we’ll root her out soon enough. Now, I believe our mutual friend Hubert von Vestra has been telling you all about a certain potent potable…”

Linhardt gasped. “You’re not working with Hubert!”

“Working _with_ him?” Albus laughed. “Oh, no, of course not! He works _for_ us!”

“You’re lying!”

“I can’t believe it,” Caspar said, dumbfounded. Actually, he _could_ believe it all too easily—it was that upon hearing it, he realized he didn’t _want_ it to be true. Like Ferdinand had said yesterday, Hubert had been Edelgard’s vassal for fourteen years. How evil could he be to betray her after so many years of faithful service? How could anybody’s heart be that black? “Edelgard… Bernie…” His eyes stung and watered; tears, hot and wet, roll down his cheeks. Not only had he betrayed Edelgard, he’d set him and Linhardt up! _“Hubert, you dastard!”_

Albus chuckled and walked toward him and Linhardt, closing the distance between the two of them. Shadows crawled over his craggy, wrinkled face, cast from the guttering candles whose flames left weak oases of light in the desert of gloom engulfing the room; even the strange sigils tattooed on his face seemed to shift and move like ants crawling on his skin. Though his eyes were pure white orbs, sans irises, sans even pupils, they were no less sharp and alert for lack of them.

“Curse him all you want; I’m afraid he can’t hear you from all the way over here. So, getting back to the point,” he hissed, uncapping the vial and inserting the eyedropper’s long, thin beak, “which of you two wants to disappear first?”

* * *

Ferdinand had volunteered to check up on Bernadetta and Edelgard for the day for one reason and one reason only—to apologize to Bernadetta for what he’d done. Most men of noble blood were too proud to apologize to people they’d wronged, unless said people were more powerful than them or had something they wanted. Their schemes and machinations were all about self-interest, and it sickened him. Where were the nobles who stood for kindness, politeness, and morality? Where were the nobles who acted as beacons for the masses to follow? More and more, they seemed to only exist in fairy tales.

Bernadetta was not more powerful than him, nor did she have anything he wanted. Apologizing was simply the right thing to do.

And yet he hadn’t gotten his chance. When he’d come to deliver breakfast, she’d been asleep, and when he’d come to deliver lunch, he’d allowed himself to become flustered in the presence of both Edelgard and Dorothea, spoken ill of Hubert’s ‘plan’ to have Edelgard fake her disappearance (a plan in which he himself was losing more and more confidence by the minute), and gotten himself promptly chased from the room.

This time would be different.

He crossed the courtyard hunched over, a cloak draped over his shoulders to keep both himself and the plate of food cradled in his arms from getting wet. The rainstorm that had swept down from the mountains that afternoon had settled back into a hazy mist that hung in the air and a fog dense enough to blunt a knife, which combined with the rapidly blackening evening sky made it impossible to see more than a few yards ahead. He hurried to the dormitories, following the ghostly lantern light bleeding through the fog across the courtyard, stumbling on the stone steps, and ducking under the awning where it was cozy and dry.

He knocked on Bernadetta’s door. “Bernadetta. It is I, Ferdinand von Aegir. I come bearing dinner.”

No response.

He knocked again. “Bernadetta, are you asleep?” He pulled off his hood and leaned closer to the door, cupping his hand to his mouth. _“Lady Edelgard?”_ he whispered, making certain his voice would not carry. _“Are you awake?”_

The door remained shut.

He waited at the door, knocking on occasion, to no avail. Perhaps they were both sleeping. It surely must have been tiring to be stuck in a room with nothing to do. Or perhaps they were avoiding him.

With a sigh, he slumped over and sat down, leaning his back against the door and resting the plate in his lap. “Bernadetta,” he said. “Perhaps you are asleep, or perhaps you can hear me. I hope you can hear me. I would like to offer you my sincerest condolences and most heartfelt apology for what has befallen you.”

He resisted the urge to pick at the food staring up at him, despite the growling of his own stomach. Even if it got cold, it would still be a welcome meal to two empty stomachs when Bernadetta and Edelgard let him in, whenever they did that.

“That night in the dining hall, my drink and Edelgard’s were swapped, unbeknownst to me. Later, when I noticed that Sylvain was making you uncomfortable, I grew worried and feared he may have…”

He shook his head. The more he justified it, the more he felt as though he was simply skirting the issue.

“The reason I had was my own, and I meant you no ill will,” he said, “but nevertheless, I switched your drink with Edelgard’s. For that, for causing you such trouble, I am truly sorry.”

There was still no answer.

“You need not hide, if you do not want to,” he added. “Garreg Mach is a welcoming place. There are students and faculty from all over the world here—from all corners of Fódlan, from Brigid, from Duscur, from Almyra. This is a place of tolerance. You will be accepted here, no matter what you look like.”

Still nothing.

“And besides, you are a very pretty mouse,” he said.

With that, he sighed, set the plate down in front of the door, and stood up. “Your dinner is right outside the door. I will try to speak to you again later. Please do take care, Bernadetta.”

He took a deep breath, raised his hood, and trudged back into the rain, feeling unfulfilled and oddly empty.

He had scarcely taken three or four steps before Dorothea and Petra both coalesced out of the fog before him. Dorothea had a large handbag clutched tightly to her chest. Still feeling emotionally vulnerable from his unheard confession, he couldn’t hold back a surprised gasp. “Dorothea, Petra. What brings you two out on such a dreary evening?”

“We are going to Bernadetta’s room,” Petra said, “to be having a ‘night of girls.’ Dorothea says it is an academic tradition.” Her long maroon hair, braided in the traditional style of Brigid royalty, snaked out of the hood of her cloak and soaked up the rain like a sponge.

“Ah, well…” Ferdinand glanced over his shoulder. The dormitories had already vanished into darkness and mist. “I just stopped by to deliver her dinner. She didn’t answer. I fear she is mad at me, or asleep.”

Dorothea gave him a look that said without words, _well, perhaps if you hadn’t made such an ass of yourself, Ferdie…_ “I think I can coax her out. Come on, Petra.”

“I am having excitement to see her,” Petra chirped as she and Dorothea headed for the dormitories. Ferdinand followed, but at a distance. There was something in his gut that told him something was wrong, distinct from its growling. A heavy weight that seemed to want to pull his guts all the way down to his boots.

 _“Oh, Bernie,”_ Dorothea sang, rapping her knuckles against the door to her room. _“It’s us, Dorothea and Petra! We’re here for girls’ night!”_

The door adjacent to Bernadetta’s creaked open and Annette poked her head out. “You’re having a girls’ night?” she asked. “Can I come?”

“Sorry, Black Eagles only,” Dorothea said. Disappointed, Annette sidled back into her room and closed the door behind her.

Dorothea turned her attention to the door again. “Bern? You okay in there?”

“I think she is being asleep,” Petra said. “Gloomy days can be making one feel very tired.”

“It’d be nice if we could just bring her the food Ferdie left.” Dorothea sighed. “Poor Bern, missing two meals. She must be miserable.”

Ferdinand nearly leaped a full foot in the air as a gentle hand fell on his shoulder. He whirled around and found himself face to face with Byleth, who stared at him with piercing gray eyes. “Professor! What are you doing out here?”

“Girls’ night,” Byleth answered, heading for the girls with a rain-soaked lantern bobbing in her hand. She was, Ferdinand despaired, impossible to figure out sometimes.

“Oh, Professor,” Petra said. “We are wanting to bring Bernie dinner, but she is not waking. Can you help?”

Byleth reached into her coat and plucked out a ring of keys. As professor, she had spare keys to the rooms of each student in her house to be used in the case of an emergency, which might have unsettled less scrupulous students but didn’t bother Ferdinand at all. “Slip the plate in and be on your way.”

“Thanks, Professor.” Dorothea patted Petra on the shoulder. “Don’t worry; we can still have our own girls’ night if you want…”

The door swung open and the light from Byleth’s lantern spilled into the room. Ferdinand peeked inside over the professor’s shoulder, overcome with curiosity as the leaden feeling in his gut grew heavier and more restless.

The room was empty; books and dolls littered the floor.

 _“Oh, no,”_ Byleth whispered, the uncharacteristic tremor in her voice nearly as terrible as the sight of Edelgard’s uniform laying in a crumpled heap in the middle of the floor, bloodstains leaving splotches on her crimson cape so dark they were nearly black.

* * *

The last thing Edelgard remembered was a flash of light, white with violet bleeding on the edges, and the familiar trappings of Bernadetta’s room vanishing. When the light faded, only darkness rushed in to fill the void left in its absence. She could only make out the faint outlines of what looked like distant wooden shelves and amorphous object suspended in the abyss like phantoms.

Disoriented and sick, she clutched at her throbbing head. She recognized the telltale and transient grogginess that lingered for a few seconds after a warp spell, but there was more working on her than that.

The violent, visceral memory of lukewarm water, tasteless and inoffensive, pooling in the back of her mouth. Struggling and thrashing under the grip of her attacker, coughing and choking and gagging as bit by bit, drip by drip, the water and its invisible additive trickled down her throat.

_The poison._

She tried to pull herself up to her hands and knees, but her body gave out and her limbs crumpled underneath her. Her muscles felt like jelly, her bones like soft clay, her flesh like melting wax; a feverish wave of pins and needles washed itself across her skin. The figure looming high above her faded into the darkness, blurring and sharpening in time with the throbbing of her headache.

Edelgard weakly lifted her head, her brain pounding against the inside of her skull, and crawled across the cold stone floor toward them. The darkness whirled around her.

Her body felt as heavy as lead, as unmoving as stone; faint, aching twinges burrowed into her flesh and jabbed at her wrists, knees, elbows, shoulders—striking between the bones with icy, numbing arrowheads. A sharp, throbbing ache ran down her back, skittering farther and farther down her spine with every rhythmic pulse.

Her fist clenched around a scrap of fabric torn from her cape, so hard the nails cut crescents in her palm, so hard that the claws sprouting from her fingertips bit into her skin like tiny fangs.

She lifted her hand, every knuckle aching, clawing futilely at her attacker’s faraway image, which loomed larger by the second yet never seemed any closer, remaining just out of reach like a desert mirage. She could swear they were standing there right in front of her, looming like the towers of the cathedral, but they melded into the darkness like a ghost.

 _“You… traitor…”_ she gasped, dragging her hoarse voice through her ragged, sandpaper-rough throat, _“I swear on my life… on my crown… I… I’ll stop at nothing… to…”_

The assailant regarded her with mild amusement. She fixated on their face, but it wavered and rippled like a reflection in a disturbed pond, the waves sweeping it away.

Thinking was as difficult now as moving. The words Edelgard tried to speak swam through mud as they passed from her mind to her mouth. _“I… Edelgard von Hresvelg… will…”_

The darkness swallowed everything, and the culprit slithered away into it.

* * *

Bernadetta woke up with a head full of fog, struggling to piece together what had happened. She remembered a burst of darkness, something slithering, a knife, the taste of blood filling her mouth, a bright flash of light… was that the right order?

She pulled herself up, shaking the grogginess from her head. _“Get it together, Bernie,”_ she mumbled to herself. She scratched idly behind her ear as she looked around the room. There was little light; just a thin strip of light high above her that cast a faint diffuse glow on the floor that was barely enough to illuminate her surroundings. The floor beneath her paws was hard, cold stone, but there were hilly little lumps shrouded in shadow surrounding her like a little mountain range. It wasn’t her room. Too big. So big that the walls and ceiling, if there were any, vanished into the darkness.

 _If there were any?_ “Stupid Bernie,” she muttered. “Of course there’s a ceiling.” Where was this place, though? Was it under the rest of the monastery? This place made the cathedral look like an outhouse.

 _“Edelgard?”_ she called out, letting her small voice echo through the vast abyss, so weak that it didn’t even echo. _“Are you out there, Edelgard?”_ No, she couldn’t just call her _Edelgard_ like they were friends just because they’d shared a room for two nights. _“Uh… Lady Edelgard? Your Highness?”_

She felt her paw catch on something thick, soft, and ropey. She stumbled, but just barely managed to keep her balance, and felt around for the object. It was some sort of very large braided rope, something like… the drawstring of a hood.

She looked up, squinted, and realized that she was standing in the shadow of a hill of crumpled fabric. And beside it was a large swath of black fabric and gold filigree and trim that she eventually realized was her blouse. And it was much, much bigger than her.

More fragments of memories fluttered through her head. Someone… someone else in the room, and they’d grabbed Edelgard and pinned her down and…

 _“Lady Edelgard!”_ She ran, falling to all fours to scurry faster across the floor. Running that way felt as natural, somehow, as breathing.

_“Bernie…?”_

She paused, her ears twitching in the direction of the response, and reversed course at full speed, her heart fluttering as she came to a halt at the shore of another rumpled sea of fabric. _“Edelgard?”_

_“…Is that you?”_

Edelgard’s voice was weak, barely even a squeak. But it was enough. Bernadetta hurried across the swath of cloth—Dorothea’s spare nightgown, she realized—and zeroed in on her, trampling the frozen ripples and waves under her paws.

What she found instead of Edelgard was a white mouse nestled among the crumpled folds of the nightgown, a mane of long white fur splayed out around its head like a halo. As Bernadetta approached, it gingerly pulled itself up on its hind legs, clutching at the sides of its head with its forepaws. Its mane spilled over its shoulders and down its back.

“I just had the most horrible dream,” the mouse moaned in Edelgard’s voice, “although… I suppose I always do…”

“L-Lady Edelgard… is that you?”

“Who else would I be?” the mouse asked with an incredulous, imperious tone that without a doubt belonged to Edelgard, cracking open pale eyes. “Ah, but I’m glad to see you, Berniiiieeeeeeee _eeeeEEEE!”_ With a shriek, she threw herself backward and fell over, her little mousy chest heaving.

“What?” Bernadetta wrinkled her nose and looked down at herself. Before, she had been human enough still, aside from the fur, claws, tail, snout, _et cetera,_ but now what she saw was much more… mousy. _Try not to panic,_ she told herself. _Try not to panic, Bernie. You had two days to get used to this…_

Edelgard struggled to catch her breath. “My apologies. You, er, startled me. Oh… oh, g—okay. Slightly more of a mouse than before. Bigger. I think we can work with this…” She was babbling. Bernadetta had never heard her _babble_ before.

“Um… n-no? I’m a regular-sized mouse, I think,” Bernadetta said. “You’re the same size as me.”

“Ah,” Edelgard sighed, relieved, “then I’ve merely been shrunk. Hardly ideal, but workable.”

Bernadetta wondered if she should point out the obvious, since Edelgard seemed to be so pointedly avoiding it. But if Edelgard was avoiding it, then wouldn’t she get angry at her if she drew attention to it? She couldn’t have Edelgard angry with her! Not _here,_ wherever _here_ was!

But Edelgard was smart. She couldn’t just ignore all of the signs forever. Sooner or later she’d notice that she was covered in fur, or that she had a snout and whiskers, or that a tail as long as she was tall was dragging itself behind her. And when she figured it out, wouldn’t she be furious with Bernadetta for _not_ telling her in the first place?

Damned if she did, damned if she didn’t. Bernadetta took a deep breath. “Uh…”

“Hmm? What is it?” Edelgard asked, not quite looking at her.

 _Bernie, you_ have _to tell her,_ Bernadetta told herself. _If you don’t and she finds out on her own, she’ll_ kill _you…_

“Tell me what?” Edelgard asked sharply.

Oh, no! She’d said all of that out loud by mistake! Bernadetta took a hasty step back. “Oh, I, um… I j-just wanted to tell you that… I respect and admire you… as a leader, as a classmate, as a princess, as… um… a mouse…”

Edelgard’s whiskers twitched. “I beg your pardon?”

Bernadetta realized what she’d let slip out. “It’s, um, just that, uh…” She kneaded her paws nervously and bowed her head. “You’re, uh… also… a… mouse.”

Edelgard fell silent. She looked down at her forepaws, then reached up and prodded the tip of her snout, then gingerly pinched her ear, then finally glanced over her shoulder and took stock of the tail trailing behind her.

Bernadetta sighed with relief. Edelgard was taking it surprisingly well, with all of the stoicism one would expect of the proud and noble scion of the Hresvelg dynasty. “I’m so glad you—”

And then Edelgard let out a horrified scream and threw herself into the sea of fabric, wrapping as much of it around herself as she could until she had completely cocooned herself.

And there she remained, silent and motionless save for the twitching tip of her tail poking out from the cocoon.

Steeling herself, Bernadetta took a step toward her. “Um… Lady Edelgard? A-Are you okay?”

What sounded uncannily like a muffled whimper wormed its way out of the thick bundle of cloth.

Bernadetta took another step closer and rested her paw against the cocoon. “Um… you, uh… don’t have to hide from me.”

No response this time.

“I mean… you’re, um… you’re a very pretty mouse?” she offered, trying to channel Dorothea as best she could.

Still nothing.

“No, really, you are. You’re a much prettier mouse than me. You have… um… glossy white fur, and a long tail, and…” She wasn’t really sure what else to say about mice. There really wasn’t much else to them. Ears? Teeth? “And your whiskers are very elegant and refined?” she added. “If a mouse could be a princess, you, uh…”

 _No, Bernie, you idiot,_ she told herself. _Look what you’ve done! Edelgard obviously doesn’t want to be reminded of any of that! She’s clearly upset, and you just made her feel_ worse!

The cocoon quivered, and finally Edelgard spoke, her voice muffled and muted. _“Bernadetta.”_

Bernadetta braced herself. She’d stepped in it now, all right. Now Edelgard hated her. “Y-Yes, Lady Edelgard, Your Highness?” she stammered. This was the end. What kind of life could she possibly lead when the future leader of the Empire personally loathed her?

_“Leave me be.”_

Bernadetta took a few steps back, then a few more for good measure. Of course. Of course Edelgard wanted to be left alone. Especially when all she had for company was stupid, useless Bernie.

She laid down on her side, resting her head against the soft cloth carpeting the floor. When she tried to take a breath and calm herself, it wouldn’t come; it caught in her throat like she’d swallowed a stone.

She wasn’t one to cry. She’d learned at an early age that making pathetic little noises only made things worse. But she’d never felt so close to crying as she felt now. As hard as she tried to hold it in, her eyes watered.

She wanted to go back to her room. She wanted to go back to her bed. She wanted to be somewhere where Dorothea or Flayn or Petra or Linhardt or the Professor or even Caspar or Ferdinand could knock on the door and say hi, even if she wouldn’t answer. She didn’t want to be lost and alone down here in the dark.

She glanced at the cocoon again. Her sensitive ears could pick up the faintest hint of muffled sniffles from within, although that was likely her imagination. No help from Edelgard. She had her own problems to deal with. Not that she _deserved_ anything from the likes of her.

She laid there, sniffling and drying her tears with her fur, for what seemed like an eternity. All the while, Edelgard hid from her, making hardly any noise, barely moving.

For _her_ of all people to be acting like this was more frightening to Bernadetta than a horde of slavering monsters, or worse, an inescapable social engagement.

She’d _broken_ Edelgard. And now there was no hope for either of them.

Forlorn, she rested her head in her forepaws. What could she do? What did Professor Byleth do to get _her_ out of her room? Besides bribing her with tea, Bernadetta couldn’t think of anything. Not that there was any tea to be found here. She didn’t even know Edelgard’s favorite blend, anyway.

There had to be some way to fix her. Maybe there was nothing Bernadetta herself could do, but maybe if she tried to imitate someone she looked up to or respected…

Trying as hard as she could to quell the omnipresent voice in her head telling her she’d only make things worse, she inched closer to Edelgard’s cocoon, padding lightly across the soft carpet. She knew what she had to do.

As terrifying as Hubert was, Edelgard seemed to trust him deeply. He had been at her side in a flash the other day. If she could act like him and say to her what he’d be most likely to say…

She gulped and swallowed her nerves. _“Lady Edelgard,”_ she hissed, imitating Hubert’s low, raspy growl as best she could. It sounded more like she had a sore throat. _“I am here for you. And I am here to tell you… to say that… um…”_

Bernadetta paused and tried to recollect herself. She really wasn’t sure _what_ Hubert would say to Edelgard in a situation like this. She just didn’t know him that well, since whenever he tried to speak to her she tended to end up screaming and running away, and she _especially_ didn’t know what kind of things he talked about in private with Edelgard. Would it help if she chuckled evilly? Did he do that around her?

No. She couldn’t overthink this. She just had to say something honest and truthful and hope it made sense coming from him.

 _“Think, um,_ rationally _about this,”_ she said. Hubert was a master of dark magic, and dark magic was tied to reason, right? So Hubert must be a rational person. _“No matter what you look like on the outside—”_

She coughed. She couldn’t keep doing the voice anymore; it was murder on her throat.

“No matter what you look like or how small you are or how furry you are,” she continued in her own voice, “you’re still Edelgard. And that’s who we both need—not another Bernie-Bear…”

She clapped her paws over her snout. Had she really just compared Edelgard to _her?_ Did she have a death wish?

The cocoon unraveled. Edelgard poked her snout out, then the rest of her head, then crawled out of the cocoon. She took a few seconds to get her bearings, her whiskers twitching.

“Lady Edelgard?” Bernadetta asked. “Are you… okay?”

“Yes, I’m fine,” she answered after another moment of hesitation. “I merely needed to lie down for a while and gather my wits about myself. I appreciate your concern. I am fine now.” She paused again, flashing a strained smile. “I am fine now,” she repeated, sounding slightly more sure of herself but in a way that did not exactly inspire confidence.

She plodded away from her makeshift cocoon, picked a loose scrap of cloth and a thin ribbon up off the ground, and tied the ragged swath around her neck to create a makeshift cloak that she could drape over her shoulders.

“Um… what are you doing?” Bernadetta asked.

“Getting dressed,” Edelgard said, as though it was obvious. “Er… Bernadetta, tell me, wasn’t this red before?”

“I wouldn’t know,” Bernadetta answered. “Ever since yesterday, I’ve been colorblind. It all just looks kind of chartreuse to me…”

Edelgard’s face fell. “Oh,” she said. “I see. What a shame. Anyway, let us make haste. Professor Byleth must be worried sick about us, and I’m certain Hubert has made good progress finding the antidote by now.”

The two of them began to explore the chamber they’d been trapped in, gingerly making their way through the darkness. Bernadetta was surprised by how much she could see with so little light; even though what she _could_ see was hardly anything, it was more than she’d expected. And even when she couldn't see anything, the subtle currents of the air seemed to catch on the tips of her whiskers to create a vague impression of her surroundings.

As she passed by the hilly lump that was her clothes, or what was left of them, Bernadetta realized that _she_ wasn’t wearing anything and hadn’t been since she’d woken up; her brain screamed at her until she did as Edelgard had done and made her own cloak out of a ragged strip from the hem of her blouse.

“By the way, back there, were you… imitating Hubert?” Edelgard asked her once she’d finished dressing herself.

“I’m sorry! I-I didn’t mean to offend you!” she squeaked, clutching her new cloak so tightly around her that her claws poked through the fabric and dug into her skin.

Edelgard shook her head. “No, no, it was… kind of you. I won’t tell him you did that, though, unless I have good reason to embarrass him.”

“Oh, no… I offended _him?_ That’s even _worse!_ Please don’t tell him—he’d _kill_ me!”

“Okay. I won’t.”

“You promise?”

“Of course,” Edelgard said. “Hubert wouldn’t kill you, though. I would forbid him.”

“Thanks. I guess.”

“I don’t think I would have to, though. I suspect he has a soft spot for you.”

Bernadetta shook her head. “That’s impossible. He’s so…”

Edelgard laughed. “Oh, it’s all an act. He’s quite sweet.”

“H- _Him?”_ Bernadetta sputtered, incredulous.

“Albeit… intense,” she admitted. “But I digress. That was what he _would_ tell me, were he here with us. ‘Think logically. You fight your battles with what you have, not what you’ve lost, so take stock of what you still have…’”

“Um… and what do we still have?” Bernadetta asked.

“We can still speak. We can still think. We can stand on two legs. That is what makes us human, not the size and shape of our bodies. That is what gives us the power to shape our own fates. That is…” Edelgard let out a deflated sigh, as though disheartened by her own rhetoric. “…better than nothing.”

As the two of them ventured deeper into the vast chamber, Bernadetta noticed that Edelgard wasn’t just wearing that scrap of fabric from Dorothea’s nightgown as a fashion statement. She was hugging it tightly to herself as though it were a security blanket.

“I think we’re in the cellar,” Edelgard said as she and Bernadetta felt their way through the darkness. “There should be a set of stairs we can climb near here.”

Bernadetta looked up. That thin line of light that barely illuminated the chamber could, she supposed, be the gap between a trapdoor and the ceiling. It would lead straight to the ground level of the monastery, likely near the dining hall, and from there it would be so easy to find one of her classmates or Professor Byleth…

Her stomach growled. And food, too.

 _“Hey, you two, maybe don’t go that way?”_ a thin, small voice rang out through the gloom.

Bernadetta nearly leaped straight up from shock; Edelgard whirled around in the voice’s direction and fell into a combat stance, fangs bared. _“Who’s there? Identify yourself!”_

There was an unmistakable sound of a match head striking against the floor; a flickering teardrop-shaped tongue of flame blazed forth, casting a halo of light in the distance. The halo surrounded another mouse, one that also stood on its hind legs and was clothed in ragged robes. It was holding the matchstick like a torch; more unlit matches were holstered at its hip like sheathed swords.

“Hi there. Nice to meet you two. Name’s Matthias,” the mouse said, casually waving a paw as though greeting a friend. He had exactly the kind of voice one would expect a mouse to have—tiny, meek, mild, and genial. As he stepped closer, Edelgard hurriedly backed away in equal measure. “Anyway, like I said, you probably don’t want to go that way.” To demonstrate, he waved his torch in the direction Bernadetta and Edelgard had been headed, illuminating a smattering of spring-loaded mousetraps scattered at the foot of the wooden staircase (Bernadetta barely recognized it as a staircase at first glance, though, because the first step was almost twice as high as she was tall). “See? Those things’ll snap your leg in two if you’re not careful.”

“Ah.” Perturbed, Edelgard crossed her arms. “You have my gratitude,” she said, though from her terse and frosty tone of voice it didn’t seem like he had anything of hers at all, save for perhaps her contempt.

“Hey, no problem. It’s all in a day’s work. Looks like you two are new here, eh?”

“One could say that.”

“So you must be pretty lost. You know, there’s a couple dozen of us back just a hop, skip, and a jump away from here. It’s pretty safe there. No traps, no poisons, no rats, no cats. Just us mice. And food and blankets. You know, creature comforts. For us creatures.”

“That sounds gre—” Bernadetta started.

“Thank you, but we aren’t interested,” Edelgard said. “We have our own destination in mind.”

“Oh, cool. That’s alright. Hey, I can probably get you there, too. Know this place like the back of my paw,” Matthias said, offering his paw. “But we should probably hurry—the Plague Rat’s on his way here, and you probably don’t want to be in the same place as him.”

If Edelgard had looked uncomfortable before, now she looked as though she’d stepped on a thumbtack. _“Plague Rat?”_

Matthias wrinkled his nose and his brow. “You two really _are_ new here. Yeah, the Plague Rat. Right piece of work he is. He’s the kind of guy who lives rent-free inside your head once you meet him. Assuming you still have one when he’s done with you. Most folks don’t.”

The three of them wandered through the darkness, soon leaving the cellar behind; Matthias’ torch cast shifting shadows across the worn and craggy walls of a claustrophobic tunnel winding through the wall to an adjacent room in the basement.

Matthias skidded to a halt and held Edelgard and Bernadetta back, dashing the head of his match against the floor to snuff it out. _“Shh,”_ he hissed. _“I think he’s here.”_

There was a sound like steel scraping against stone; Bernadetta felt a curtain of dread drape itself over her. It was a chilling sound, but more than that there seemed to be an _aura_ surrounding it, a subtle musky scent on the air that made her blood run cold.

Matthias struck another match and held it out like a sword, shivering with either fear or anticipation; the light from the guttering little flame spilled across the floor until it reached the ashen, naked paws of an enormous rat.

The rat stood easily twice as tall as any of the three mice. Ragged black fur covered a lithe and sinewy body adorned with a tapestry of naked scars and patches of scabby flesh; its armor was a patchwork of little scraps of jewelry, tiny cast-off plates of armor from a knight’s gauntlet, and loose buttons held in place with cloth and string. A long, ragged cape of black cloth hung down its back. Its head was covered by a macabre helmet—a worn, yellowed skull from an even bigger rat, its chipped fangs curving down from its upper mandible to fill the empty space where its lower jaw would have been. The death’s-head helmet had pitch-black eye sockets that seemed empty save for two cold, glaring pinpricks of light. In one paw, the beast clutched a serrated kitchen knife nearly as long as it was tall.

The deathly rat trudged closer, dragging the edge of the knife against the floor. A low and guttural growl echoed through its helmet. Pinpricks of light—eyeshine slipping in and out of sight—flickered behind it, an amorphous, roiling mass of claws clicking and scraping and tails slithering across the floor in the dark. _  
_

To Bernadetta’s shock, Matthias drew a tiny mouse-sized sword—an honest-to-goodness _sword_ with a hilt and pommel and blade and everything—and stepped in front of her and Edelgard. “Oh, there he is,” he said, his chipper attitude unwavering. “Count of three, run for it.”

“Run for what?” Bernadetta asked.

“That’s a sword,” Edelgard pointed out, dumbfounded. Her gaze was fixed on the Plague Rat, so it was impossible to tell if she was referring to Matthias’ inexplicably well-crafted toothpick-sized sword or the Plague Rat’s enormous kitchen knife.

 _“Three! Run!”_ Matthias shouted, bolting to the side, his torch bobbing in the air and flashing long shadows across the floor with every step.

 _“Wait! I thought you were going to_ count!” Bernadetta wailed, struggling to keep up. She’d hardly taken three paces before realizing that something was amiss, and glancing behind her shoulder, saw that Edelgard hadn’t budged an inch. _“Edelgard!”_ she called out.

She rushed to Edelgard’s side and grabbed her by the arm, struggling to pull her along. It was almost as though she’d been rooted to the floor. _“Edelgard, please!”_ What was she thinking? She couldn’t stay and fight—she didn’t have any weapons!

The Plague Rat took slow, lumbering steps, as though savoring the dread of his prey. He came to a stop in front of Edelgard and looked down at her, cocking his head curiously. _“Edelgard… von Hresvelg?”_ he asked, teasing out each syllable of the name as though tasting a vintage wine.

Edelgard lifted her head to meet his baleful gaze, eyes wide, mouth agape, shoulders quivering like the last leaf on a dying tree.

She wasn’t standing her ground against the beast, Bernadetta realized. She was _petrified._

Without thinking, Bernadetta took Edelgard’s arm and yanked her off her feet with all her might and then some, then bolted, dragging her along and following Matthias’ bouncing torchlight. If there was one thing she excelled at, it was running away from enemies that were bigger and stronger than her. Edelgard stumbled behind her as she snapped out of her trance and struggled to keep up, unused to beating such a hasty retreat.

The Plague Rat stood in place, but turned his head to follow the two of them as they hurried after Matthias, a baleful chorus of low and menacing laughter drifting through the air as the darkness swallowed him up.

* * *

The first thing Caspar realized upon waking up was that every part of his body hurt. The second thing he realized was that his body had a few distinctly different parts than it was used to having, and they hurt just as much. The third thing he realized was that he couldn’t remember anything that had happened after the apothecary had pinned him down and wrenched open his jaw and held an eyedropper of poison over his mouth like the blade of an executioner.

The fourth thing he realized, putting two and two and two together, was that he really, _really_ didn’t want to open his eyes and confirm what he was pretty sure had happened while he’d been unconscious.

He felt something grab him by the shoulders and shake him. _“Caspar! Cas! Are you awake?”_ Linhardt hissed in his ear.

“Gimme the good news first,” he mumbled in response, picking himself up off the floor. He knew there was bad news—he could feel it running down his spine all the way down to the tip of the tail he definitely wasn’t supposed to have. He wanted something that would soften him up for it.

“Well, you saved us both from the apothecary. That’s good news,” Linhardt told him. “Ran right up his trousers and the next thing I knew, he was curled up on the floor crying.”

“…And the bad news,” Caspar guessed, “is that I’m a mouse.”

Much to his surprise, putting the good news first really _had_ softened the blow.

He forced himself to crack open his eyes at long last. The first thing he saw was a mouse just as big as he was standing on its hind legs in front of him and kneading its forepaws together anxiously.

“Well,” the other mouse said in Linhardt’s voice, “it’s a bit worse than that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the chapter that transitions the story from The Emperor's New Groove to Redwall via a short detour through The Witches.
> 
> Fun facts:
> 
> \- Did you know that mice are naturally terrified of rats because rats will kill and eat them? This is line one of my essay arguing that Edelgard's fursona would be a mouse and is pretty much the reason why this fic exists. Ironically, though, mice are also great swimmers  
> \- Matthias is named after the main character of the first Redwall book and has nothing else in common with him, although admittedly I haven't read that book since I was like twelve and am terrified of revisiting it in case it doesn't hold up  
> \- The voice I have in my head while writing Matthias is just Taika Waititi as Korg in Thor: Ragnarok, while ~~Cluny the Scourge~~ Plague Rat gets Clancy Brown. God I love choosing voice actors for my OCs  
> \- If you think Edelgard is having trouble with the whole mouse thing now, just wait until we get to her POV next chapter  
> \- My friend [radiocabel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/radiocabel) cautioned me against using the baseball reference in the first scene and I told them you can't prove that baseball doesn't exist in Fodlan


	3. The Mice of Garreg Mach

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Edelgard has trouble adjusting to being a mouse. Bernadetta learns that some temptations are more powerful than her crippling social anxiety. Hubert and Byleth investigate two separate crime scenes. Caspar's day gets worse.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Commissioned some adorable Mousegard art from my friend:
> 
> Fire Emblem: Two Mouses ([source](https://twitter.com/CTKitsune/status/1218238193126035456/photo/1))

Every last scrap of evidence in Bernadetta’s room pointed to the culprit. Hubert just didn’t know _how_ yet.

He examined the room with a master sculptor’s eye for detail. Nothing would escape his search. And it was imperative that he examine the room before any of the Knights of Seiros or the academy’s faculty had their way with it at the crack of dawn tomorrow—not just so he could catalog every trace of evidence before they got their grubby hands on it, but so that, if need be, he could remove any evidence that raised too many damning questions.

First and foremost, though, he had to find the culprit and discern Edelgard’s whereabouts _quickly._ It took two to three days to reach Enbarr from Garreg Mach on horseback, one or two on a pegasus or wyvern mount; that meant he had very little time, especially _now,_ before the Emperor discovered that he was without an heir. And that was when the treacherous nobles surrounding him would draw their knives.

But if Edelgard reappeared soon enough, then a second message proclaiming her safety would be sent in the wake of the first one, and if it arrived soon enough, then each of those traitors to the crown would be caught red-handed—and their day of reckoning would finally arrive. That had been his plan from the start.

But for that to happen, Edelgard had to still be _here._

 _How could I have miscalculated like this?_ Hubert asked himself as he rummaged through Bernadetta’s room by lanternlight. He had been certain that Bernadetta’s room would be the perfect hiding place. Everybody knew she barely left her room and always kept the door locked. No one should have suspected a thing. She would have been safe while he’d rooted out the would-be assassin, and whatever dark plot was brewing in Enbarr would collapse like a house of cards. But the situation was spiraling out of control; he had made a grievous error in his judgment, and the cost of that error hung from his neck like a millstone.

He left not a stone unturned. He searched every part of Bernadetta’s room, down to the last drawer. (Was it uncouth to violate her zealously-maintained privacy? Yes. Was it _necessary?_ Most certainly.) He made a mental note of everything that had been disturbed.

The door. No sign of stress on the hinges. No sign of forced entry. If the culprit had entered through the door, they had done so in the guise of a friend. The windows—thin, tall slits in the room’s stone outer wall. The mortar holding the panes of glass in place was as solid as ever, and the hinges could only swing open from the inside. The bedsheets heaped on the floor. Disturbed, but not recently. The candlestick resting on the floor, a small pool of dried wax stuck to the carpet surrounding its blackened wick like a halo. Bernadetta’s handmade plant dolls scattered across the carpet, thrown off their perch on her desk. Signs of a struggle. Stray spatters of crusted blood, almost invisible on the red rug and speckling the stone floor.

Hubert leafed through Bernadetta’s journal (the one Sylvain had returned to her the other day), hoping to find in one of its blank pages some sort of scrawled plea for help or the name of the culprit, but found nothing. He checked her sketchbook next. Nothing of interest either, save for an unfinished self-portrait Bernadetta had begun drawing. Though anyone searching her belongings might have simply written off the bestial visage as yet another of the many fantastic creatures sketched throughout the book, he felt uncomfortable taking that chance, and so he ripped the page from the sketchbook (no one would notice; at least half of the poor book’s pages had already been ripped out and crumpled up, victims of Bernadetta’s utter lack of self-confidence), folded it into a compact square, and slipped it into his pocket. She would have it back when this was all over.

The next odd piece of evidence he didn’t want anyone to find was a teardrop-shaped glass bottle that had just barely rolled under the bed. It was a bottle large enough to hold a single sip’s worth of liquid, capped with a cork bound to the glass with a loop of wire. Hubert recognized it immediately. In the Empire, soldiers wishing to bolster their strength on the battlefield used these bottles for easy access to single doses of (often diluted) magical draughts. That, too, he slipped into his pocket.

The uniform was the most curious and incongruous thing in the room, and it was because it drew his eye so strikingly like an ugly wound marring perfect skin that Hubert saved it for last. He knew that Edelgard had changed out of her uniform into one of Dorothea’s spare nightgowns, so why leave the uniform out? Why not stow it out of sight in one of Bernadetta’s drawers or under her bed? It was as though it had been left out as a message. But a message left by whom—the culprit, or Edelgard herself?

The uniform was disturbed as though trampled underfoot. The bloodstains were, compared to what little had made it to the floor, unusually plentiful and large. Was it possible for someone to bleed so much and spill so little of it? Yes. _Plausible?_ Not so much.

His gaze traveled to the torn corner of Edelgard’s cape. The tear in the hem was especially loose and ragged, not as clean as a knife or dagger might cut, as though torn out by a grasping hand. Whose hand? Edelgard, or her kidnapper?

The number of questions in his mind had doubled. But at least now he had _specific_ questions. Wherever Edelgard or her culprit was, that scrap of crimson silk would lead the way to them, if only he could find it.

 _Do not fear the worst,_ he told himself. _Plan for it, but do not fear it._ Yet when he reflected on all the fates that could have befallen Edelgard when she had been depending on him for her safety, he felt a fell wind sweep through his body, exposing himself to a sense of weakness he had not felt so strongly in ten years.

He slipped out of the room, closing the door firmly behind him, and faded into the shadows of the night to continue his search elsewhere. As he left, he felt the weight of a day’s worth of relentless and fruitless searching pressing down on his shoulders.

And the day was not yet over. A lesser man might have let out a heavy, forlorn, put-upon sigh of resignation. Hubert’s emotions were not so difficult to control.

He had barely put a foot down on the grass when something small, yet fast and heavy barreled into him, knocking itself over. Hubert stumbled from the sudden impact, looked down, and saw Flayn sitting on the grass and gingerly rubbing her head.

“Oh…” She shook her head and looked up at Hubert. “Oh, hello, Hubert. I did not see you there.” She stood up, smoothing out her skirt. “I saw your face and mistook your pallid, vampire-like complexion for the moon. I am very sorry.”

“A little late for you to be out, is it not?” Hubert commented, crossing his arms. “Your brother will pitch a fit if he sees you with me. You may end up with a pallid, vampire-like complexion of your own,” he added, almost wishing he had fangs to bare for added effect.

“Truth be told, I cannot sleep,” Flayn said, sighing as she bowed her head and gazed glumly at the dark lawn. “It is truly terrible what happened to Lady Edelgard, and poor Bernadetta as well—and after all we did to keep them safe.”

“Truly,” Hubert muttered in return, not entirely willing to carry on a conversation with her. To tell the truth, he found Flayn irritating in the same way he found coffee with too much milk irritating (for the record, ‘too much milk’ was ‘any’). She was almost _too_ saccharine and precocious, yet so sheltered and childlike, to be real. If she were some sort of golem created by the Archbishop out of animated sugar cubes, he wouldn’t be surprised in the least. If only Caspar and his loose lips had not invited her into this little conspiracy…

“I cannot help but wonder… am I to blame for this?” Flayn wondered aloud. “The other day, when I delivered their meals, I carried them on two plates. Was the culprit watching? Did they discern from that that two people were sharing Bernadetta’s bedroom?”

“It’s possible,” Hubert answered, making absolutely no effort to spare her feelings.

“Oh. Oh, I…” She sniffled and rubbed her eyes, her voice cracking. “I am so dearly sorry, Hubert. If this is all my fault…”

“Whining won’t make things any better,” he said, burying himself in his cloak to ward off the cold, damp air. “At any rate, Lady Edelgard’s well-being is not your concern. Go back to bed… before a horrible fate befalls you as well.”

“Ah, I see,” she croaked. “Yes, I… should retreat before I cause any further suffering. My apologies.”

A lantern bobbed in the distance. _“Flayn!”_ Seteth called out, illuminated by the light from the lantern in his hand as he approached.

Second in command to Archbishop Rhea, Seteth ruled the monastery with an iron fist. He was compassionless, humorless, and dripping with sly guile, with the only trace of any warmth beneath his strictness and severity revealing itself in the presence of his younger sister alone—in other words, a man after Hubert’s own heart. That was to say, if he was even a man after all. As Flayn’s older brother, he was likely as human as she was.

“Flayn, I have been looking all over for you,” he said, sternly clamping a gloved hand on her shoulder. A note of worry and concern played on his face. “Come to bed at once. It is not safe for you to be out and about, especially now.” 

His brow furrowed at the sight of Hubert looming in the dark in front of her. Hubert wished for the second time that night that he could have fangs.

“I am fine, Seteth,” Flayn said, wiping at her misty eyes. “I was just… so distressed, and hoped a walk would clear my mind…”

 _“Sleep_ will clear your mind,” Seteth said. “Come; I have chamomile tea on the kettle.”

Flayn let out a heartbreaking sigh. “Yes, Big Brother.”

“And you, Hubert.” The stern furrows etched into Seteth’s brow deepened. “I understand you must be distraught, but I must ask you to remain in your room for the night.”

“That did not do Bernadetta much good, did it?” Hubert asked, glancing toward her door.

Seteth’s jaw clenched involuntarily for just a second. “Safer than wandering about at this time of night. There is nothing you can do about Edelgard now, save for making your pleas to the Goddess that our investigation bears fruit. The knights are searching the monastery as we speak and will expand their search to the surrounding area as soon as there is daylight.”

“Hmph.” Hubert scowled. “You may keep your faith in your goddess and her saints. I have faith only in Lady Edelgard. Whatever terrors awaits her, I know she is meeting them with unparalleled strength and bravery. I only wish I could meet those terrors by her side.”

“All the same, you do not want to arouse anybody’s suspicion by skulking around in the dead of night. Somebody may suspect you of something,” Seteth told him. “Now go to bed, Hubert. Just because you resemble so closely a vampire does not mean you do not need to sleep,” he added, a wry tug on his eyebrow the only indication he was attempting to make a joke.

Hubert bowed curtly. “I understand, sir.”

Seteth left with Flayn in tow, the bobbing light of his lantern soon swallowed up by the night and the shadowed walls of the monastery, leaving Hubert to return to his work.

_“Hey, Hubert!”_

Jolted out of his thoughts, Hubert looked up and found Claude poking his head out of his window on the second floor of the dormitories.

 _“I found more mice!”_ Claude called out to him.

* * *

To say the very least, Edelgard was not feeling quite herself. It was as though something inside her had cracked, as though a single hairline fracture had formed in the pillar of strength she had spent ten years building up and now threatened to shatter her like glass.

Her thoughts kept circling, circling, circling like the currents of a whirlpool, a maelstrom piercing a black ocean. Kept circling around the claws that skittered across the floor— _her_ claws—the bristling, itchy fur that brushed against cold, clammy flesh— _her_ fur—the whiskers that wagged with a deceptively feathery touch— _her_ whiskers—the teeth that gnawed on dead and dying flesh— _her_ teeth—the tail that slithered in the dark— _her_ tail. All of these thoughts kept circling around one word boring a hole into her mind.

_Vermin._

She fought against that word with every fiber of her being.

 _I am still Edelgard von Hresvelg,_ she told herself, though the name felt less and less her own every time she did. _I am not vermin. I still have my wits, I still have my mind, I still have my reason. I am not a horrid thing that creeps and stalks across the fields of the dead—_

She took a deep breath.

She forced herself to look at Bernadetta, who still had an iron grip on her arm as she dragged her along. Though thoroughly mousy from tip to toe, echoes of her human form rang out as though fighting their way out of her body—the sad gray eyes, the hunched and unassuming posture, the messy mop of violet (or, to a mouse’s eyes, more of a dark gray-blue) hair crowning her head.

While Matthias led her and Bernadetta through the darkness, she clutched her makeshift cloak tighter around her shoulders. She could smell the faint odor of blood clinging to it, the blood that had stained the ragged edges when she’d clutched the scrap of her cape so tightly she had bled. She could smell it and knew that it belonged to her. And beneath that was a different, subtler scent she couldn’t describe in any concrete terms but knew beyond a doubt was her own—not the stale, musky odor of a mouse but the reassuring, reaffirming scent of her own humanity.

The darkness gave way to dim light. Tunnels lit by ragged torchlight, as vast to mice as the looming vaulted ceilings of the Garreg Mach Cathedral, dirty and musty. Edelgard had only heard rumors of this place—a network of tunnels spanning wide across the monastery and stretching even into town—but had never thought it had really existed. She had heard of it only in whispers among other students.

They called it ‘Abyss.’

Amid crumbling walls, buried in crevices, an enclave of little lives clung to the stone. Tents made from scraps of cloth, burlap, and canvas suspended over sticks rose from the shadows, lit in eternal twilight by the flickering torches above. Edelgard’s first thought upon seeing the ramshackle collection of tents was of a military encampment, but there were no banners, no cavalry, no stockpiles of weapons, and no soldiers.

The mice scurrying through the camp were clad in ragged cloaks, robes, and tunics stitched inexpertly together from scavenged scraps of cloth and felt, not armor; and those few who met even the slimmest criteria for being armed were wielding spears and axes crudely fashioned from sticks and scraps of metal lashed together with thread and twine and shields made from porcelain and metal buttons. And there were more babies—curled-up, hairless, pink maggot-like little things so young they couldn’t even open their eyes yet—than one would normally see in a soldier’s camp. True, any number greater than zero would be too much, but there were enough here to outnumber the adults by a factor of two at least.

Edelgard had seen entire villages wiped off the map by marauders and bandits before. This camp looked like what was left behind.

“Ah, here we are,” Matthias said, his meek little voice as full of cheer as ever as he led Edelgard and Bernadetta through the camp. “Home sweet home. Just a little farther; we’ve got a little room in back with you two’s names on it! By the way, what are your names, anyway? I’m pretty sure I said mine’s Matthias, but it’s okay if you forgot. Takes me and Zeke forever to get names right, too.”

Edelgard said nothing. She clenched her jaw as she weaved through the crowds, keeping as much distance between herself and the other rodents as possible, clutching so tightly at her cloak that she could feel her claws wear holes through the frayed edges and prick her skin, as if it were a talisman to ward off evil influences. Normally, she would think herself above such superstitious thoughts, but at three inches tall, there wasn’t much she was _above_ right now.

“I’m, uh, Bernadetta, and this is Edelgard.” Bernadetta told him in her stead. “Er, um, I-I mean, Lady Edelgard von Hresvelg. K-Kind of a big deal.”

“Oh, yeah, I can tell. Got an aura of big-deal-ness. Princess or something?”

“I feel more like an ‘or something’ at this moment,” Edelgard muttered bitterly.

Matthias ushered them to a literal hole in the wall covered by a rough burlap curtain, a little chamber made by the empty space where a brick had been chiseled out from the wall. The floor was lined with woven cotton that Edelgard was sure had come from somebody’s sweater; the carpeting was a welcome respite for her bare paws compared to cold, hard stone tiling. A ragged mound of linen swatches rested in the corner. A single lit match stuck into a hole bored in the wall illuminated the room, but only barely. An evil aura clung to the room; Edelgard could feel it pressing up to her chest, tensing her muscles and bristling her fur like an unwelcome chill in the air.

She clutched her cloak in her paws, pulling it tighter both to ward off the chill and soothe the swirling ache in her stomach. She could feel her clawed fingers grasping for her true form, her true self, as though if she could only grab it tightly enough she could pull out more of those echoes of her humanity. Beneath the fur, despite the tail, despite her size, she was still Edelgard, she insisted. There was nothing else she could be.

How many times would she have to think these thoughts before they would sink in? It felt as though she’d been repeating them to herself for hours already. She felt like Bernadetta now, helpless to stop kind and truthful words from sliding off her mind like water off a duck’s back.

“This was Joseph’s room until yesterday,” Matthias said. “Now it’s yours. Hope it’s spacious enough.”

“Why isn’t it Joseph’s room anymore?” Bernadetta asked, nervously clutching the tip of her tail.

“Oh, he died,” Matthias answered with a surprisingly cavalier tone of voice. He shook his head and clucked his tongue. “Poor guy. Didn’t stand a chance. Anyway, enough about him. I’ll leave you two to get settled in.”

With that, he vanished behind the curtain.

“Still roommates, huh?” Bernadetta looked around the sparse room. “Lady Edelgard, are you okay? Ever since we ran into that Plague Rat, you’ve been…”

Bernadetta’s voice faded away. Edelgard felt her ribs squeeze against heart, pressing the air from her lungs. The rough stone walls, the blackened corners, the flagging light. No windows, no vents, just stale air. In an instant, nearly a decade of her life vanished. She was ten years old again, she was chained to the floor again, she was surrounded by the dead and dying again; fresh stitches throbbed anew over scars that had reverted to oozing wounds. But this time, though, on top of everything else, she could hear the squeal of sharp metal dragging across stone and menacing laughter boiling the air around her. And just as she had when she’d gazed upon the Plague Rat, inside her mind, behind the icy facade she had built up, she became nothing more than a helpless little girl—the last survivor of eleven siblings—screaming for her father to save her until the slightest breath felt like swallowing mouthfuls of sand.

In her waking moments, those memories were impossible to grasp firmly, mercifully; when she slept, or when the boundary between consciousness and unconsciousness grew thin, they flooded back as fresh and vivid as though they had happened yesterday.

This time, her legs gave out. A rush of numbing warmth spread through her body and the sparse splashes of faded color strewn across the room faded to even duller gray; the room spun around her, the shadows encroaching until there was nothing but darkness.

The next thing she knew, she was nestled under a warm blanket. Someone was running a comb through her hair. The gentle scratching of delicate teeth raking across her scalp and the soft pressure of the sheets weighing down on her back were as warm and comforting as an embrace. The teeth of the comb slipped behind her ear and she felt a welcome tingle rush down her spine all the way to the tip of her tail; she shuddered and curled up under the blanket, inviting more of that welcoming frisson.

Before she cracked open her eyes, she felt phantoms hovering over her, the last dregs of a forgotten dream on the cusp of fading away into the ether. But rather than the tormented half-remembered faces of her brothers and sisters, the fleeting images draining from her mind were that of Professor Byleth letting her rest her head on her lap while she raked her fingers gently through her hair.

The dim, bleak world around her rushed in to replace the idyllic vision like water filling a tub, blurred shapes and figures—what little there was to see—sharpening and coalescing before her.

Disappointment washing away her inappropriate fantasies, she stirred reluctantly. A moan squeaked its way out of her mouth as she stretched stiff and aching limbs. _“Bernie?”_ she muttered, fumbling for a coherent thought to cling to.

The clawed fingertips brushing against the backs of her ears pulled away. _“I’m sorry!”_ Bernadetta immediately answered, skittering backward. “I-I didn’t mean to wake you! Please forgive me; I forgot my place—I thought that maybe—”

“It’s fine,” Edelgard mumbled, sitting up and adjusting the blanket draped over her cloaked shoulders. She was filled with skin-crawling revulsion both by the idea that Bernadetta had seen fit to scratch behind her ears as though she were somebody’s pet and by the fact that it had felt _good;_ mingled up with that was the shame that she’d had that split-second fantasy of her _teacher_ doing it to her. She decided it would be best not to press the issue or interrogate her feelings any further at this moment. “Just—”

“I won’t do it again,” Bernadetta blurted out.

“Thank you. I appreciate that. How long was I out?”

“Just a few minutes. Do you feel better?”

Edelgard nodded. “Yes. I think. I’m okay now.”

“Are you sure? Since we got stuck down here, you…”

“Haven’t been myself?”

Bernadetta looked away. “Um… Well, uh, I—I wasn’t _exactly_ going to… I mean…”

“It’s hard to be yourself,” Edelgard admitted, “when you’re only three inches tall.” Then again, though, Bernadetta seemed to have next to no trouble being herself. Perhaps, as she’d said earlier, she had always been a mouse at heart.

Perhaps, Edelgard mused, she _was_ being herself right now—just not the version of herself she’d grown accustomed to being. Her scorched and blackened heart, her iron mask of steadfast determination and guarded emotions, the layers of armor holding back the river of tears she’d long since thought had dried up—perhaps all those were merely artificial and had been stripped away by her transformation. Perhaps she, like Bernadetta, had always been a mouse, but had for so long fancied herself an eagle that she had forced herself to believe she was one.

What if beneath her lies was not the truth, but just another deeper, thicker layer of lies? What if everything she had thought she’d known about herself was self-delusion? What if she didn’t know who she really was _at all?_

No. She couldn’t afford to think like that. This was all just temporary. As soon as she and Bernadetta were back on the surface, as soon as Hubert had retrieved his antidote, all of this would be over and there would be no question what she was. Edelgard had to keep in the forefront of her mind the hope—the _truth—_ that this was all temporary, all just a bad day. She had a future. A future that would reshape all of Fódlan for the better. She was the flame that would burn down all that was evil and insidious in this land, and she would be that flame again.

“I’m just having a really bad day,” she said.

“You and me both, Your Highness,” Bernadetta said with a little chuckle. “N-Not that I’m saying your day’s been just as bad as mine!” she hastily added. “You’re obviously fainting all over the place and getting paralyzed by f-fear, and—I, um, I mean—Just forget I said anything!”

“Gladly,” Edelgard answered, loath to be reminded of how many times she’d fainted in Bernadetta’s presence over the past few days (even _once_ was far too many times). “I’ve no intention of arguing with you over whose day has been worse. It isn’t a competition.”

“But obviously, your day’s been worse. Just forget I tried to compare the two.”

“I will.”

“I mean—”

“Forget it.” Edelgard sighed. Speaking of forgetting… “Bernadetta, do you remember how we got here?”

“Um…” Bernadetta thoughtfully scratched her forehead, likely relieved by the change in subject. “Matthias led us here from the kitchen cellar…”

“No, before that.”

“Oh. You mean how we both turned into mice?”

“Yes.” Edelgard rested her head in her paws. Just trying to turn the clock back that far in her head made it ache. The last thing she remembered clearly was that she’d folding her uniform to stow it in Bernadetta’s drawer for safekeeping; beyond that was a haze of vague impressions.

“No, I’m sorry.” Bernadetta shook her head. “My head hurts just thinking about it. Someone had a knife, and I remember tasting blood, but…”

Edelgard tried harder to reminisce. “I remember… we were attacked by someone. And I…”

 _I called them a traitor,_ she recalled.

That meant she must have known them. Hubert had warned her earlier about the schism among those who slither in the dark and had told her that a faction had been using the mouse poison for its own purposes. That meant it had to be one of _them._ The only question was _who._ Kronya? Solon? How many other agents were there in this monastery she didn’t even know about? Had they been closing in around her all along—the jaws of an invisible trap preparing to snap shut?

She stood up with a jolt. Her blood ran cold, her heart fluttering like a hummingbird’s wings in her chest as several disparate thoughts tied themselves together in her brain. “Come on, Bernadetta. We’re leaving.”

“Are you sure we can’t rest here a little bit?” Bernadetta asked. “It’s late… before we set out, we should get some sleep, and maybe some food…”

It all made too much sense. A plot by those who slither in the dark to infiltrate the monastery by turning their agents temporarily into rodents. The theft of Hubert’s poison and his antidote. A bunch of mice walking around and talking like people—one of which had happened to stumble upon Edelgard and Bernadetta just after they’d been transformed.

This place may have _looked_ like a refugee camp, but it was all just a smokescreen.

It was a trap.

“No. We’re leaving now,” Edelgard insisted.

“Okay,” Bernadetta said, pulling herself up. “We’re leaving now.”

Edelgard headed for the curtain draped over the exit just as it parted and Matthias slipped through, a bundle in his arms.

“Hello, there!” he said, cheery as always. “I have some stuff to give you two, since you’re so sorely lacking in necessities.”

“Thank you,” Edelgard said frostily, “but we’re—”

Matthias slipped a paw into the bundle and pulled out two short lengths of splintered wood. “First things first, oral hygiene. Your teeth never stop growing, so you’ll want to give something a good gnawing twice a day to keep them filed down so they don’t poke through the roof of your jaws and stab you in the brain. Here, you can have these sticks.”

He handed one stick to Bernadetta, then the other to Edelgard. She didn’t take it.

“Your first gnawing stick is a really sentimental object,” Matthias continued. “Mum said I wore through my first one in a week and snapped it clean in two. Then I had _two_ first gnawing sticks, and that was pretty special.”

“Wait, are these _your_ sticks?” Bernadetta asked, nearly dropping hers.

“What? Gross! No! I wouldn’t give you my first stick! You just don’t _do_ that,” Matthias said, scandalized. “Anyway, how’re you two adjusting to the whole mouse thing?” He rummaged in his bag. “I’ve got—”

“We were just leaving,” Edelgard said, pushing past him. How did he know that she and Bernadetta were ‘adjusting to the whole mouse thing’ anyway?

“Already? Why don’t you stay here and rest up a bit first?” Matthias asked. He rested a paw against her shoulder only for her to wrench herself free. “At least come on out and meet the rest of the mousefolk. It’s almost story time for the pups, and I’m sure they’ll be really stoked to meet you.”

The visceral image of a cluster of squirming, squeaking baby mice, pink, tiny, and hairless, did little to calm her frayed nerves. “I would rather—”

“‘You would gladly?’ Great! Thanks a bunch!” he said, grabbing her by the wrist and tugging her along.

 _“Let go of me!”_ she snarled, pulling her hand away and reaching for the sword sheathed at his belt. She snatched it up, leveled it at his throat, and promptly realized she’d grabbed one of his matchstick torches by mistake.

Could she kill him with a matchstick? Probably, if she tried hard enough.

Matthias gingerly pushed the bulbous head of the match aside. “Okay, a little testy. Look, I get it. You’re a stranger in a strange land. Just calm down a bit and take the time to get to know us.”

“No.”

A clawed paw rested itself on Matthias’ shoulder. The paw was connected to a larger mouse about a head taller than Matthias himself, his fur barely hiding a network of scars. A little eyepatch covered one eye (although, Edelgard reminded herself, it was perfectly normal-sized from a mouse’s perspective), and one of his ears had been whittled down to a nub while the other had a sizable collection of notches in it. “Well, well, what’s all this, then? Someone bullying you, Mattie?”

“Oh, hey, Zeke!” Matthias wormed his way out from under the larger mouse’s grip. “No, we were going to practice swordfighting. With matches. For safety.”

Zeke’s single eye roved over to Edelgard and widened so suddenly that it was as though he’d stepped on a tack. He crouched down a bit and held his paw up to his mouth, then whispered in a much shakier voice, _“Think it’s ‘bout time for_ that _story, eh, brother?”_

Matthias nodded. “Yeah! Yes, definitely. Anyway,” he told Edelgard as his big brother dragged him away, “you’re free to go, but please stay for story time! It’ll just be five minutes!”

“I think we can stay for five minutes,” Bernadetta told Edelgard.

Edelgard headed down the path winding down the middle of the crowded camp, but found the way blocked as Zeke and Matthias took their place in the middle of the pathway and a mass of mice gathered around them, forming an impenetrable crowd of bodies.

“Looks like we don’t have a choice,” Edelgard muttered as she and Bernadetta found themselves pressed into the crowd, the adult mice ringing the edge of the circle and penning in the younger mice. She was loath to push her way past the crowd—the thought of rubbing elbows with these rodents made her feel ill.

 _“So there we were,”_ Zeke said, resting a scarred arm over Matthias’ shoulders, _“Li’l Mattie and I, all alone, face to face with the Plague Rat!”_ The litter of writhing pups gathered around his feet shuddered and gasped. _“His slavering maw was dripping with poisonous ichor—”_

“Venomous,” Matthias corrected.

_“Dripping with VENOMOUS ichor, and his skeletal face was so dead and lifeless that the grass withered around him! And his eyes burned like hot coals, and his great, nasty sword went chop-chop-CHOP—”_

He paused for dramatic effect. A hush fell over the tiny audience. Edelgard almost wanted to point out that one did not _chop_ with a serrated blade, but rather _sawed,_ which was much more gruesome.

Her thoughts turned to the Plague Rat before she could stop them, and she felt a shiver run up her spine. It had known her name. _How had it know her name?_

“Bet ya’ think we died, did’ya?” Zeke asked the audience.

“Um… n-no?” one of the pups squeaked.

 _“No! We did NOT_ _die!”_ Zeke boasted. _“Know what we did instead? We fought him off, yes we did! The two of us, together, fought him off! We fought him up and down the Tower of the Heavens, ‘cross the Infinite Bridge, through the Field of Giants! We fought him from the crack of dawn to the edge of dusk! And then, when he was tired and gasping for breath, and the dying light of the sun was right in his eyes, we nobly, bravely, VALIANTLY ran away—all the way back down here to the Lair of Wolves!”_

The little mice cheered, along with several of the adults. Zeke had the voice and presence of a small town preacher and commanded the same rapt attention from his followers. Edelgard was certain he was embellishing this story (if it had happened at all), though, given how readily Matthias had run away earlier. Then again, she thought with a hint of amusement, that just gave him more in common with the average priest.

 _“And then my brother—”_ Zeke gave Matthias a rough, yet playful shove— _“had a vision! The sword of Saint Martin gave him a vision!”_ He gave Matthias another shove that placed him front and center before the crowd. “Matthias, tell ‘em ‘bout your vision.”

Although he was a mouse, Matthias looked oddly human in his discomfort. “Well, um, so after the battle, I was polishing my sword like I always do, keeping its blade shiny and rust-free—”

“Spends a lot of time polishing the ol’ blade, he does,” Zeke said with a sly and bawdy wink, “if y’know what I mean.”

The adults laughed. Some of the little mice laughed, too, but likely only because the adults were laughing and they wanted to fit in.

“Anyway, I was looking at my reflection in the flat of the blade,” Matthias said, “and then I had this vision of a special warrior who’d come to us in our time of need, and the sword spoke to me, and it said that our time in the abyss was over and a savior was on her way—”

 _“A savior!”_ his brother roared. _“A savior of all mousefolk!”_

“And she—well, she’d be mousefolk just like us—”

_“A mouse from afar, delivered by divine providence!”_

“Except she wouldn’t look like us, what with her white fur—”

_“With glossy fur as white as fresh snow!”_

“And a long mane—”

_“And a silken mane like liquid moonlight!”_

“And a cloak that smelled like blood—”

_“And a cape stained crimson with the blood of the unrighteous!”_

Edelgard wondered how a bunch of colorblind mice could even have the word ‘crimson’ in their vocabulary. Did they just conceptualize it as a particularly dark and deep shade of ugly grayish yellow-brown? She looked down at her cloak and felt a wistful ache stir her heart—her favorite color, and she couldn’t even _see_ it anymore. All the more reason to get back to normal as quickly as possible.

“Um, Lady Edelgard, I think they’re talking about you!” Bernadetta tapped Edelgard excitedly on the shoulder. “This is like something out of a fantasy novel…!”

Zeke gave Matthias another brotherly nudge. _“And the savior’s name would be…”_

“Edelgard von Hresvelg,” Matthias mumbled. It seemed that the presence of his big brother was the only thing capable of making him shut up for any appreciable length of time.

 _“‘Edward van Helsing?’”_ his brother boomed, furrowing his brow. “What in the devil kinda name is ‘Edward van Helsing?’”

“No, no, Zeke, I said _‘Edelgard von Hresvelg.’”_ Matthias said, raising his voice.

One of the little mice, just old enough to have a thin coating of pale brown fur over its pink skin and wide black eyes, raised its hand. “Um, excuse me, Father Ezekiel?” it squeaked.

“Yes, li’l one?” Zeke said.

The little mouse turned around and pointed at Edelgard. “That mouse has glossy fur as white as fresh snow, and a silken mane like liquid moonlight, and a cape stained crimson with the blood of the unrighteous, and her friend just called her ‘Edelgard.’”

Zeke chuckled. “Why yes, yes she does! Everybody, look!”

Edelgard found every single mouse turning its head to look straight at her, even the blind pups. It was nauseating to feel so many beady eyes trained on her.

 _“The prophecy,”_ he boomed, lifting his arms at his sides, _“has come true! After countless generations of strife, a savior has come to deliver us from this purgatory! And her name is Edelgard… Van… Helsing!”_

“Um, _von Hresvelg,”_ Matthias corrected.

_“Edelgard von Rustbelt!”_

As a chorus of awed whispers fluttered through the crowd, the urgency that had been pushing Edelgard forward transformed into stunned bewilderment.

 _“You should’ve seen her back in the cellar!”_ Matthias called out. _“Froze the Plague Rat and his minions in his tracks with a single icy glare! All he could do was laugh in sheer terror as we beat a brave and noble retreat right in his face!”_

 _“Would’ve cleft the devil in twain right down the middle if she’d had a weapon!”_ Zeke chimed in.

And then the cheering began, and it was all so earnest that it pushed back Edelgard’s nausea and melted the skepticism that had frozen her heart. For a moment, she felt like Edelgard von Hresvelg again, and it felt _good._ Even if they couldn’t get her name quite right.

“So, uh, a-are we still leaving?” Bernadetta asked, tugging on her cloak.

And then as suddenly as the warm sensation had come over her, Edelgard snapped out of it. Flattery was the most powerful weapon any enemy could possess, and it was clearly being employed in spades here. As though she even believed in such infantile things as prophecies and chosen ones! 

“Yes, yes, of course,” she snapped, struggling to part the crowd that had begun to roil around her like an angry sea. The bristling whiskers, skittering claws, slithering tails brushed past her, each feathery touch forcing her to grit her teeth and force back the burning wave of bile pushing itself up her throat. The air was thick and hot, settling like stones in her lungs as her tiny heart throbbed with a hummingbird’s pulse against her ribs.

A chorus of pleas rang out around her. _Are you going to help us? Are you going to save us? Please help us! We’ve been waiting so long! Please help us, Edelgard! Help us! Save us! You have to get us out of here, El! We need you! I need you!_

_El._

No one save her father still lived who called her that. Were the dead calling out to her through this teeming mass of vermin?

_Please, El. Please, El. Help me. It hurts so much. I need you._

_“No,”_ she whined through gritted teeth, pushing away the phantoms. The world spun around her, gray and black clouds creeping into the corners of her vision as the plaintive faces wrapped around her bled into an indistinct, monstrous amalgam. _“No, no, no, get away, get away! Get away from me!”_

 _“Hey, hold on a minute,”_ Matthias protested, grasping the hem of her cloak. _“Y-You can’t just_ leave!”

Edelgard wrenched her cloak free of his grip, grabbed Bernadetta by the wrist, and pulled her along out of the camp, hurrying into the cavernous halls. She didn’t look back until she was sure she’d left the throngs of rodents far behind, and with them, the voices of the dead, the last echoing _El, please, El, please_ ringing in her ears as it faded away.

She paused to catch her breath, pressing a hand to her chest to feel her racing heartbeat slow to a steadier pace that was still far faster than what she was accustomed to feeling. She had read once that all creatures’ hearts beat the same number of times, but long-lived creatures’ hearts beat slower and short-lived creatures’ hearts beat faster. Was it an ill omen that even her resting pulse was so high?

“Are you sure we had to leave, Lady Edelgard?” Bernadetta asked. She wasn’t as winded as Edelgard, but then again, she had much more experience running. “They seemed pretty nice to me.” Her stomach growled so loudly that even Edelgard could hear it. “…And they had food.”

“It was a trap,” Edelgard insisted. “Remember, Hubert told us that my would-be assassin’s faction was using the mouse poison to infiltrate the monastery. How else do you think all those mice could walk around and talk like us?”

Bernadetta furrowed her brow. “But all those babies…”

Edelgard gave her a sharp look.

“Nothing! Never mind! Y-You’re right, Lady Edelgard; I didn’t mean to doubt you! We’re safer out here. But… how are we going to get back to the surface?”

“We’re underground,” she said as she led Bernadetta down the halls, through the islands of torchlight illuminating the floor between stretches of inky darkness. “As long as we go up whenever we’re able to, we’ll reach safety.”

“What if we run into a cat?”

“We’ll deal with that.”

“What if we run into the Plague Rat again?”

Edelgard froze.

No. No more freezing. She’d just been caught off-guard the first time. That was all.

“We’ll run,” she said, forcing herself to take another step forward and continuing on her way. “You’re good at that.”

Bernadetta sighed. “Okay.”

“It won’t be long,” Edelgard assured her. “We’ll make it to the surface and find Professor Byleth, and then Hubert will put the antidote together…”

She trailed off as Bernadetta scurried past her on all fours, crossing the hallway at a speed that would make a horse jealous.

Bernadetta realized how far ahead she’d gotten, stopped dead in her tracks, and stood up. “Um… I-I think might be faster to run like this?” she said, flush with embarrassment. Her tiny, timid voice echoed in the vast hall.

Edelgard took a deep, exasperated breath and shook her head. “I will not debase myself like that,” she muttered as Bernadetta waited patiently for her to catch up. If she started _acting_ like a mouse, she would start _thinking_ like one, and who knew where _that_ would lead her? She barely felt like herself as it was already. One little push—and perhaps she would forget it all.

Something slithered in the dark behind her.

Her pulse racing, she whirled around to face her pursuer, felt something slip across her paws, and promptly fell flat on the floor, scraping her palms against the rough stone as she tried to break her fall.

There had been nothing behind her. Nothing, she realized, save for her own tail.

 _“Lady Edelgard! Are you okay?”_ Bernadetta called out.

Her tail. A constant flood of sensation stretching out behind her that her mind couldn’t quite make sense of and that acted seemingly of its own accord, an unrecognizable and disobedient part of her body, a constant reminder that she was…

The word _vermin_ loudly interjected itself into her head. The word—

She had to head that thought off before she could think it. _I am_ not _a rat,_ she told herself. _This body is not the body of a rat, it is that of a_ mouse. _There is a crucial distinction._ She thought back to the many times Hubert had explained to her the difference between mice and rats, the most recent being the evening Bernadetta had been poisoned. _Mice are smaller than rats. They have shorter, pointed snouts and larger ears. Their tails are longer. Mice are nothing to fear. Mice did not make feasts of my family._

The thought was little comfort.

As she passed out of the oasis of torchlight and into the pool of shadow stretching between it and the next one, she felt something crack and snap underfoot. Brittle as a dry twig, but oddly shaped. Edelgard felt her whiskers twitch as they discerned the shape of the air around her; she cautiously crouched down and felt around the floor, her paw slipping across the curve of a caved-in skull. She felt around the floor, finding more bones, a swatch of rough fabric, and something made of wood. As her eyes adjusted to the dark, she found the details leaping out at her—a rumpled and ragged cloak barely hiding a jumbled mess of a mouse’s skeleton, a cavernous pool of shadow filling the gaping crater in its skull. Disorganized phalanges clutched the hilt of a wooden sword and a brass button.

Edelgard picked up the sword and makeshift shield. The skeleton’s tenuous grip relented without a single protest, and she continued on her way. The weight of the sword and shield in her paws was familiar, empowering—with these, even a little mouse could defend itself.

“It’s okay. You’ll get used to your tail after about a day or so,” Bernadetta assured her when she caught up with her.

“I don’t intend on staying like this long enough to get used to it,” Edelgard answered.

* * *

The longer Bernadetta and Edelgard roamed the halls, the more corpses they found in their path. Some clothed, some not; some armed, most not; some so ancient they were nothing but bones, some fresh enough that bits of putrid flesh still clung to the bone, and some so fresh that they still had fur. Some of the corpses were too large to be mice.

This place felt like a giant crypt. Bernadetta had read about ossuaries underneath monasteries throughout Fódlan, the walls literally _sculpted_ from thousands upon thousands of bones, and had been enthralled (a shame there was no record of Garreg Mach having one—even the Holy Tomb had been disappointingly boneless). These skeletal remains, though, were not so fun to see. No one here had been laid to a peaceful repose; from the looks of it, they’d all died in battle.

At least Edelgard was acting more like her old self. With a weapon back in hand, she seemed just as fearless and resolute as she always had, with no trace of the worrying fragility she’d been demonstrating since she’d became a mouse.

Edelgard paused to scavenge one of the fallen mice, tearing its weapon out of bony hands. “Bernadetta, here.” She handed the long, curved length of wood to her; Bernadetta gingerly took it, ill at ease to be stealing something from a corpse. It took her a few seconds to realize it that it was a longbow, or at least a crude approximation of one—long as she was tall with a gentle, if uneven curve to the knobbly wood. The craftsmanship was lacking; it was especially inflexible compared to the composite bows she was used to, and the battered quiver Edelgard handed her next was filled with toothpicks, sewing needles, unlit matches, and hedgehog quills.

“Um… thanks?” Bernadetta said, slinging the quiver over her shoulder. She doubted even Claude von Reigan could so much as hit the broad side of a barn with this thing if he were in her shoes, but it was better than nothing.

“There,” Edelgard said. “Now we can both protect ourselves.” She stifled a yawn. “We should rest for the night. We’ll take turns sleeping and keeping watch. Bernadetta, can you take the first shift?”

“Uh… s-sure, I guess,” Bernadetta said without really listening. She was still thinking about the arrows that corpse had been trying to shoot with. No wonder he was dead now, if that was what passed for ammunition in his army.

“I’m a light sleeper,” Edelgard said, sitting down and leaning back against the wall and closing her eyes, “so you shouldn’t have any trouble waking me when you start getting tired.”

Bernadetta thought back to how she’d dragged Edelgard from the floor to the bed earlier that morning and doubted she was as light a sleeper as she claimed.

Edelgard fell asleep soon enough and Bernadetta settled in for the dull, quiet monotony of the night watch. The torches overhead flickered and guttered, shifting the borders between light and shadow. Bernadetta wondered who kept them lit. Surely not the mice; the torches were too high off the floor. Did people live down here, like all the rumors said? Was there really an entire secret house of rejected and expelled Officers Academy students dwelling down here, shunning the light of day?

Maybe if one of those mole people came her way, she could somehow flag them down and ask them to bring her to the surface. Or maybe they would just trap and eat her. After all, what other options did they have for food down here? They definitely had to eat mice and rats to survive!

Bernadetta shivered. Her stomach growled. What she wouldn’t give for cold leftovers from the dining hall (her usual meal, since she tended to only leave her room for food once everyone else had left, save for when Byleth ‘invited’ her for lunch or tea). Or her own bed. Even just a pillow. Standing out here tonight with nothing to look forward to but the promise of a cold, hard floor to lie down on brought back painful memories.

Of course, though, it had been her own fault she’d locked herself in the cupboard to avoid seeing guests, as her father had reminded her… and she supposed it was her fault she was stuck here now.

“You’ve really done it this time, Bernie,” she mumbled to herself, even though she wasn’t quite sure what _it_ was. After all, there was _always_ an _it._ There was always _something_ she’d done wrong. That was what her father had taught her; that was what her _life_ had taught her. The only way to avoid doing something wrong was to just avoid doing anything at all.

Edelgard moaned and mumbled softly to herself in her sleep as though in agreement and curled up against the wall, her grip on the wooden sword she’d scavenged tightening so much that her knuckles whitened as her lips pulled back in a pained grimace. Her ears and tail twitched. Then, in a flash, the dark cloud passed over her face, she loosened up, and the pain vanished from her face.

She really _was_ a very pretty mouse, Bernadetta mused. She hadn’t been saying that just to flatter her. As far as mice went, she looked positively radiant, like an angel brought down to the world of mortals. And her fur was so glossy and looked so soft and inviting…

Bernadetta shook her head. No. One time, she had told herself. She had told herself that she would only pet Edelgard _once._ And she’d done it the last time Edelgard had fainted, and Edelgard had immediately woken up, and Bernadetta had promised her she’d never do it again.

And yet she reached out with her paw, letting it hover just over Edelgard’s head. Just one more. It wouldn’t hurt anyone. Edelgard was fast asleep. She wouldn’t even notice.

No! Bernadetta yanked her paw back. Edelgard was the _imperial princess,_ not an animal! This was extremely inappropriate! People could be _killed_ for less than what she was trying to do!

She tried to clear her mind. She spent what felt like the better part of an hour practicing with her scavenged bow, making sure to collect each quote-unquote ‘arrow’ she shot (who knew where she’d find more if she ran out?). Unsurprisingly, porcupine quills made the worst arrows, though the matchsticks’ bulbous heads weren’t exactly aerodynamic and the toothpicks and sewing needles were bad in their own special ways.

And yet no matter what she did to distract herself, she kept finding herself drawn back to Edelgard. Back to that beautiful, lustrous coat of fur as white as freshly fallen snow and ever so enticing…

One more time. She would pet her one more time, and that would be it.

Bernadetta nervously reached out, slipped her paw through Edelgard’s long, flowing mane, and began to gently rake her claws across the back of her ear. Edelgard relaxed immediately, the tension in her slumbering body lessening, her muscles going slack. She slumped over, sinking to the floor as though she’d begun to melt.

This wasn’t too bad. It was almost as though Edelgard _enjoyed_ it. Bernadetta had never seen her so relaxed. Maybe she was doing the right thing by petting her! And she was so _soft,_ too—petting her was like burying her hand in the surface of a new mink coat. Surely, Bernadetta told herself, Edelgard wouldn’t mind if she kept at it for another minute… or five…

 _“Oh, Professor…”_ Edelgard moaned.

“I wish the Professor were here with us, too,” Bernadetta said, still stroking her fur. “She always keeps a level head and always knows exactly what to do. But you’ll get us out of here, too, Edelgard. I know you can.” She sighed. “I’m really glad you’re acting more like yourself again. When you froze up in front of that Plague Rat, I was so—I-I thought I’d broken you! I was so afraid we’d both die…”

Edelgard mumbled softly and slumped further onto the floor. Bernadetta cupped one hand under her cheek for support as she kept scratching gently behind her ear.

“I know you’re having a hard time being a mouse, even if you say you’re fine. You deserve it a lot less than I do. I-I mean, you’re _Edelgard,_ not some timid little wallflower. But see, being a mouse isn’t _all_ bad…”

Edelgard stirred. Bernadetta froze, panicked, and pulled her paw back swiftly. “I’m sorry, I-I don’t know what came over me—I know I said I wouldn’t do it again, but I just couldn’t help myself!” she babbled, stumbling backward. “Please don’t yell at me!”

Oblivious, Edelgard simply curled up on the floor, still asleep. _“Don’t go…”_ she mumbled. _“Don’t… don’t leave me down here…”_

Bernadetta crept closer. “D-Do you… want me to keep petting you?”

Edelgard curled up tighter, her claws scratching the stone, her tail aimlessly lashing against the floor. _“No…”_

Bernadetta took a step back. “O-Okay! I understand! I’ll listen to you this time—no more pets!”

 _“No, no, no…”_ Still whimpering to herself, Edelgard pulled herself together, raking her claws against her ragged cloak. _“No… please… not a… not a rat… not a rat…”_

“E-Edel—”

Edelgard’s eyes flew open and she shot up to her feet. _“I’m not a rat!”_ she howled, all but throwing herself into Bernadetta’s very unprepared arms and nearly knocking her over. _“I’m not a rat… I’m not, I’m n—”_ She gasped for breath, her chest heaving and her eyes wide, wild, and unfocused. Bernadetta let out a surprised yelp and immediately dropped her to the floor. _“Not a rat…”_ she kept gasping as she writhed on the floor. _“I’m not, I’m n—I’m not, not a rat, please…”_

Though she feared another outburst, Bernadetta crept closer, crouched down, and gingerly patted her on the head. “N-No, no, o-of course not,” she assured her, unsure if she was asleep or awake. “You’re not a rat…”

“I’m not a rat,” Edelgard repeated slowly and flatly, as though mesmerized. Her breathing was still ragged, her eyes unfocused.

“It’s okay. You’re a mouse.”

“Not a rat.” Edelgard closed her eyes and slumped over as her breath slowed and leveled out and her spasms ceased. “Not… rat.”

“And you’re gonna be human again really soon,” Bernadetta assured her.

As Edelgard returned to a quiet, peaceful repose, Bernadetta wondered why she seemed to have such a fixation on rats. Was she _afraid_ of them? Was Edelgard von Hresvelg, heir to the empire and warrior without equal, afraid of _rats,_ of all things? It would explain her outburst just now, as well as why she’d frozen up earlier…

Bernadetta sighed and sat down next to Edelgard. No wonder she was taking things so poorly. To be afraid of something so tiny and then to be consigned to a world where those things were twice as big as yourself was unimaginable. The people and things Bernadetta was afraid of were _already_ allbigger than her; if they were any larger, she’d die from fright just by being around them. Edelgard was so brave just to still be alive.

She stiffened, a chill running down her spine all the way to the tip of her tail as an unfamiliar scent stung her nose. Every muscle in her body curled up like a coiled spring; her fur bristled. The scent was indescribable, yet somehow— _terrifying._

She looked up and saw a torch in the distance flicker and go out, the island of light on the floor below it vanishing. And then the next closest torch winked out, allowing the darkness to swallow up another island. And then the next one, and the next one, plunging the hallway deeper into darkness.

 _“Edelgard!”_ she hissed, shaking her by the shoulders. _“Something’s coming! Wake up!”_

The hallway grew darker and darker as more of the torches were snuffed out. Only a few islands remained between Bernadetta, Edelgard, and the vast abyss of darkness stretching out before them. Bernadetta rushed to grab her bow, fumbled to nock a sewing needle to the bowstring, and aimed it at the darkness, struggling to keep her paws from shaking.

 _“You can do this, Bernie,”_ she whispered to herself, pulling back the bowstring. The familiar burn of her muscles as she fought against the weight of the bow and the tension of the string comforted her, although she had next to no confidence in her makeshift arrows. She took a deep breath, steadying her grip and her aim.

The last of the torches up ahead went out.

Seized with cold fear, Bernadetta nudged Edelgard with her foot. _“Edelgard, wake up!”_

Edelgard snapped awake and sat up. _“What’s going on?”_ she snapped, instantly alert.

“Something’s coming this way!”

She rushed to the wall where she’d left her sword and shield, picking up both. “I’ll engage the enemy at close range, you’ll provide suppressing fire. We’ll break their ranks, then run on my signal.”

Bernadetta nodded. “Got it!” Hearing Edelgard’s commands ring out in her cold, imperious voice was oddly soothing. Everything else might have been upside down, but _that_ was still the same.

Two rats, both standing on their hind legs and towering at least six inches tall, stepped out of the shadows, both holding tarnished and bloodstained silver salad forks in their paws. An eerie, unnatural blue light shone in their beady eyes, and wisps of fog of the same color drifted from their mouths. Flanking them were two mice clad in dark hooded robes with black beaked masks covering their faces. In the center was another rat, this one on all fours with a muzzle tied around its snout, with another mouse riding on its back. The rat-riding mouse was draped in white robes and wore a veil over its face; it carried a long, hooked steel crocheting needle in one paw and held the reins to its mount in the other.

Edelgard faltered, taking a stumbling step backward and tightening her grip on her sword. Bernadetta felt her heart throb so violently it was as though it was trying to break out of her ribcage.

“Survivors,” the rat-rider intoned. It pointed with its needle to each of the standing rats in turn. “Go.”

One rat hewed close to the wall and lunged for Edelgard, jabbing with its fork. Edelgard didn’t manage to rush out of its path until the last minute, barely managing to dash the fork’s blood-darkened tines against her shield. Bernadetta fired at the rat, striking it on the shoulder, and immediately nocked another needle and fired. She could almost feel her Crest of Indech singing through her blood, quickening her reflexes. The second arrow she grabbed—a porcupine quill—only grazed the rat’s thigh, though. 

The other rat headed straight toward Bernadetta. Letting out a terrified cry, she scurried backward as its fork dashed itself against the floor where she’d stood only a second ago and fired a needle at point-blank range into its belly. The rat reeled back, squealing.

Edelgard struck the first rat’s paw with her sword, knocking away its fork. _“Bernadetta, now!”_ she barked.

Bernadetta didn’t need to be told twice. She turned tail and ran, with Edelgard bringing up the rear.

The rat-rider was faster, though; in the blink of an eye, its mount had circled around both of them and cut off their escape. Bernadetta and Edelgard were surrounded.

One of the black-robed mice lifted its paw; a circle traced out of light materialized in front of it and a fountain of dark miasma burst from the floor in front of it, shooting up into the air. The torch overhead guttered and snuffed itself out, plunging the last little island of light into the sea of darkness.

Bernadetta felt a fell wind rustle her whiskers and narrowly leaped out of the path of globule of pulsating miasma as it shot past her; as she fumbled for her quiver, she felt a tine from one of the rats’ forks graze her shoulder, ripping through her cloak. She blindly nocked the arrow and fired; she was rewarded with a pained squeak.

 _“Bernadetta! Matches!”_ Edelgard shouted out.

Bernadetta reached into her quiver, took one of the few matches jumbled up with the sewing needles and toothpicks, and struck it against the floor. With a snap and a hiss, its bulbous tip blazed to life with a hard, teardrop-shaped flame.

Illuminated by the makeshift torch, Edelgard drove her wooden sword into a rat’s ribcage with a mighty blow to its side just as the rat’s fork swung down on her shoulder. With a sharp, pained cry, she staggered backward, the sword falling from her paw.

Panicked, Bernadetta nocked the matchstick and fired at the rat. Her shot went wide, though, barely even managing to singe a whisker—but hit one of the dark-robed mice square in the chest, lighting its clothes on fire. The mouse went up as though it had been soaked in oil. At once, the blue glow in the rat’s eyes went out; as Bernadetta hurriedly lit another match, she could see it falling to all fours, dropping its fork to the floor, and scurrying aimlessly into the shadows.

 _“The mice! Target the mice!”_ Edelgard shouted as she hastily avoided a strike from the rat-rider’s long, spearlike crocheting needle. Bernadetta hurried away from the remaining rat, narrowly ducking under a swing of its fork. Something cold as ice and slimy as congealed fat wrapped around her ankle, throwing off her balance; she fell to the ground and just barely rolled onto her back and held up her bow in time to block a downward swing from the fork. The force of the impact sent tremors through her bones and numbed her fingers.

Bernadetta pulled herself up and ran off, keeping her distance as the rat stalked her, searching for the other black-robed mouse. It blended into the shadows too well, though—

_The shadows!_

She swiped the match she’d dropped—miraculously still lit—and aimed up, narrowly getting a shot off before the rat’s fork jabbed past her and cut two parallel furrows, both shallow but all stinging, into her thigh. Her aim, to her surprise, was true; the extinguished torch above blazed to life, dispelling the shadows. _“I did that?!”_ she gasped.

With a sweep of its crocheting needle, the rat-rider hooked Bernadetta’s bow and ripped it from her paws, throwing it far away; on the backswing, it caught Edelgard in the stomach and knocked her off her feet, throwing her across the hall.

 _“Edelgard!”_ Bernadetta called out as Edelgard’s body flopped against the floor like a ragdoll. She rushed toward her, only to feel the rat crash into her as it tackled her to the floor, spilling the makeshift arrows in her quiver all over the worn stone tile. Staring into the beast’s gaping, drooling maw, she let out a terrified wail and grabbed a needle from the floor, clutching it tightly in her fist and jabbing it into the roof of the rat’s mouth as adrenaline set her veins alight. The rat reeled back, blood mingling with the saliva dripping from its mouth, its claws scraping her skin as it pulled away from her.

Bernadetta had scarcely gotten up when a spike of black light burst from the floor and cut a bloody gash into her arm. The last remaining black-cloaked mouse twisted its paws into arcane sigils, summoning more of the dark spikes. They barely grazed Bernadetta’s nose and whiskers as she dashed out of the way.

The injured rat charged again, and this time the rat-rider flanked it, both bearing down on Bernadetta with murderous rage emanating from them like a baleful aura (or maybe that was Bernadetta’s imagination). She backed away, desperately looking around for anything she could use to defend herself. This was it. She was going to die down here, stuck as a mouse, and no one would ever know! She always knew she’d die alone, but not like this…

A brass disk flew past her head, sailed between the two rats, and hit the black-robed mouse right between the eyes, cracking its beaked mask and knocking it to the floor. The hulking, brutish rat immediately lost its sense of reason and veered off course, falling to all fours and bounding into the darkness. The rat-rider and its mount bore down on her, though, undeterred—

An arrow—a _real_ one, with a proper arrowhead and fletching and everything—buried itself in the rat mount’s shoulder, knocking it off-course as it let out an anguished, muffled squeak through its muzzle.

_“Edelgard! Catch!”_

A gleaming two-handed axe flew through the air, clattering loudly on the floor in front of Edelgard. She eagerly snatched it off the floor, holding it in her left paw as her right arm dangled limply at her side; the rat-rider circled around her and Bernadetta, spiraling closer to strike a killing blow.

“Bernadetta, get down!” Edelgard ordered as the rat-rider swung its needle-spear through the air. Bernadetta didn’t need to hear that twice; she dropped to the floor as the spear and a rush of wind in its wake passed overhead.

There was a shrill, metallic clang as the metal crocheting needle collided against the head of Edelgard’s axe; she knocked the needle aside, leaving the rat-rider wide open. _“I’ll strike you down!”_ she shouted out, charging at the rat-rider as she mightily swung the axe one-handed in a shimmering, silvery arc.

The rat-rider’s white robes, as well as the fur and flesh underneath, split open, a spray of blood darkening the light fabric as the mouse slumped over and fell from its mount. The final rat, freed from its magical bondage, fled into the darkness.

Silence descended once more on the gloomy battlefield. All Bernadetta could hear was her own exhausted, labored breathing and Edelgard’s. Edelgard dropped the axe and trudged toward her, clenching her jaw and hissing a pained gasp through gritted teeth as she popped her dislocated shoulder joint back into place. The next few steps she took, she stumbled, nearly falling to the floor. A few small, sparse blossoms of dark blood speckled her white fur.

“Well… how was that?” she said, helping Bernadetta up to her feet as she clutched at her badly-bruised stomach.

Bernadetta let out a disbelieving laugh. “W-We won!”

“Of course. Did you expect me to freeze again?” Edelgard asked with a strained, weak smile. She was shivering, though, as though she’d just come out of a snowstorm. Bernadetta hadn’t thought at all over the course of the battle about how frightened she must have been, staring down those rats…

 _Edelgard. Frightened._ Those words felt so _wrong_ together without so much as a _not_ between them.

“Maybe—I-I mean, no, of course not!”

“I cannot help but feel our professor would be disappointed in my performance, though,” Edelgard admitted. “Once again, you have earned my gratitude, Bernadetta.”

“No way,” Bernadetta insisted. “I’d have been totally lost without you!”

“You flatter me,” Edelgard said, resting an arm over Bernadetta’s shoulders. She was leaning on her for support just as much as Bernadetta was leaning on _her._ “Anyway, to more pressing matters—how are your wounds? Are they serious?”

Bernadetta shook her head, holding her paw to the oozing wound cutting into her bicep. “Hurts, but… I think I’ll live. Are you okay?”

“I’ll be fine.” Edelgard shuddered and drew her cloak tighter around her shoulders. “Although… it’s enough to make one wish Linhardt or Dorothea had been caught up in this madness as well,” she said with a surprisingly-nervous chuckle. Those two were the only Black Eagles with any actual aptitude for healing magic, save for Professor Byleth. “No, I wouldn’t wish this upon them,” she added, shaking her head.

As the two of them caught their breath, two more mice rushed out of the darkness toward them. Edelgard tensed, struggling to stand tall; Bernadetta swiped a sewing needle off the floor to defend herself before seeing who the mice were and letting it fall from her paw to the floor.

“Uh, Zeke? Maybe no more archery for you,” Matthias said to his brother. 

“What?” Zeke asked incredulously, gripping a remarkably professional-looking bow in one paw. “Hit the target, didn’ I?”

“You’ve got no depth perception anymore; your aim was way off. You said you’d hit the _rider.”_

“Details, details. You gotta look at the basic nature a’ things, Mattie! Anyway, it all worked out.”

“What if you’d hit Edelgard by mistake?”

“Ah, von Rustbelt can take care o’ herself.”

“What are _you_ doing here?” Edelgard asked accusingly, barely pretending not to glare at them.

“Looking for you, of course!” Matthias said, pausing to pluck the bloodstained axe off the floor and hand it back to Edelgard. “You dropped this.”

Edelgard took it from his paws and ran her thumb along the long shaft of the axe. “How do you know I use an axe?” she asked Matthias, narrowing her eyes.

Matthias shrugged. “Prophecy said so.”

“I don’t believe in prophecies,” she flatly stated in response.

Matthias nodded. “That’s okay. I don’t think prophecies care much what you think. And they still believe in you, and that’s good enough, isn’t it?”

The four of them headed back down the hall, trudging wearily from one island of torchlight to the next. Bernadetta and Edelgard stayed at each other’s side, for support; the shallow furrows in Bernadetta’s thigh stung sharply with every step she took, and Edelgard winced with every breath and had to use the long shaft of her battleaxe as a makeshift walking stick. Bernadetta could tell that she was uneasy about returning to the camp due to her lingering suspicions, but there was nowhere else to go—with their wounds and fatigue combined, she and Bernadetta wouldn’t last long on their own, especially if they ran into more of those oddly-dressed mice and their pet rats.

“You’re welcome, by the way,” Matthias told her. Anyone else might have sounded petulant; he just sounded earnest. He gestured to his brother. “Zeke, give Bernadetta here the bow and arrow.”

“Huh? Why?”

“I’m worried you’ll shoot your _other_ eye out.”

“Oh, n-no, you don’t have to—” Bernadetta began.

Zeke sighed and rolled his eye. “Fine.” He shrugged off the quiver slung over his shoulder and handed both it and the bow to her.

“T-Thanks, uh, Zeke,” Bernadetta mumbled, taking them both from him. She gently bent the bow in her paws, testing the wood’s elasticity, and plucked at the bowstring. “This bow is so well-crafted,” she murmured. It was a proper composite bow, lighter and shorter than the one she’d picked up earlier, and as sturdy as anything a student could get at the Academy. And it, too, made for a good walking stick that let her take some of the pressure off her injured leg.

“Um, Matthias? Why do you and I and Lady Edelgard get _real_ weapons while all those other mice get sticks and junk?” she asked.

“Well…” Matthias sheepishly scratched at the back of his head. “We used to have more of those, back before The End. Now all what’s left is what we’ve got. The rest we just cobble together as needed.”

“The End of what?”

“Oh, you know, everything?” Zeke said. “I swear, it’s like you two were born yesterday.”

Matthias’ paw fell to the hilt of the sword sheathed at his hip. “These here are legendary weapons from the Golden Age, before we lost Lady Rhea’s favor and the cats came. You’ve got the Bow of Warbeak, Edelgard gets the Axe of Guosim, and this here’s the Sword of Saint Martin the Warrior, first of the mousefolk. It’s mine now ‘cause the last guy who wielded it let me hold it before he died.”

“I’m sorry,” Bernadetta said. “How’d he die?”

“Cat got ‘im,” Zeke said. “Poor Peter. Took ages before it finished him off. Y’know how cats are. First it broke his arms, then his legs, then all the spiny little bones in his tail, then all his ribs, then his neck…”

Bernadetta cringed and clapped a paw over her mouth. “Forget I said anything! I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to—”

“Oh, no, don’t worry, it’s fine. It happened a whole season ago.” Matthias waved his paw, remarkably cavalier about the death of someone who’d likely been a close friend. “That’s like forever in mouse time.”

“So… this bow’s wielder died, too, huh?”

“Yeah, otherwise you wouldn’t be holding it.” Matthias shook his head. “Poor Jess.”

“What got her?” Bernadetta asked, though she dreaded whatever answer she would hear.

“Owl plucked her right up out of the grass,” Zeke said. “Swallowed ‘er whole. Bones ‘n all.”

“At least it was quick…”

“And Mortimer loved that axe.” Matthias turned his attention to Edelgard’s weapon. “Even took it to bed with him. Never took a wife. Always said, ‘who needs an old battleaxe when you’ve got an old battleaxe?’” He chuckled.

“And… how did he die?” Edelgard asked.

“Rat.”

“Plague Rat?” she asked, shivering anew as the name left her mouth. Bernadetta felt her paw, still resting on her shoulder, tighten its grip, her claws digging into her skin with sharp pinpricks.

“No, just a regular rat,” Zeke said. “Bashed his skull open and slurped out his brains.” He made a sucking noise through his teeth.

“Sounds terrifying,” Bernadetta mumbled.

“Well, of course. We’re _mice,”_ Matthias said. _“_ Being terrified of rats is like breathing air.”

Bernadetta glanced over at Edelgard, who appeared to be thoughtfully ruminating on what he’d just said. It seemed Edelgard had more in common with mice than she would like to admit.

* * *

By the time the sun had just barely crested over the horizon and edge of dawn had bled over the bell towers of Garreg Mach’s towering cathedral, the Knight’s search for Edelgard had already begun in earnest—as had Hubert’s.

Hubert had been waiting all night for the merchants to set up their shops again. The kiosks and pavilions just outside the front gate of the monastery bustled with life as sellers of weapons, supplies, foodstuffs, and what-have-you hawked their wares. By the crack of dawn, the blacksmith already had a line of students and faculty waiting to have their worn or broken weapons repaired before their next field trips; the light of the forge was already the same dull orange as the rising sun.

“Excuse me,” he asked the one of the traveling merchants from the north. “You wouldn’t happen to know a man named Albus von Barlowe, would you?”

The merchant stroked his beard. “Von Barlowe… I think there’s a von Barlowe in town, but I’m not sure.”

“In town?” Hubert repeated, just to make sure he’d heard right.

The merchant nodded. “It’s just a familiar-sounding surname. But I don’t do much business in town.” He pointed toward the supply merchant’s kiosk. “Ask her. She might know.”

Hubert bowed politely. “Thank you, sir.”

“What’s this about, anyway? Has this von Barlowe guy done something?” the merchant asked, his question falling on deaf ears as Hubert swept past him and turned to his next target.

“Bloody hell, you look like a man who could use a good night’s sleep,” the supply merchant told him, resting a hand on her cheek as she leaned against the counter. “I think I’ve got something for that, if you want me to check in back.”

“Oh, no, I’m fine, ma’am,” Hubert lied, ignoring that every part of his body felt like it was filled with lead and that if his eyes burned any hotter they could cook an egg. “I’m not looking to buy. I’m looking for a man named Albus von Barlowe, if that name rings a bell.”

“Von Barlowe?” The merchant leaned forward. “You mean the town apothecary? _That_ von Barlowe?”

Hubert’s heart skipped a beat. It was an answer he had both expected and dreaded. “The apothecary…”

“I buy a lot of field medicine from the guy. Or, at least, I _used_ to.”

“Why? What happened?”

“All of a sudden, he jacked up all his prices. I’d need a stipend from the Church on top of my profits to afford to stock up from him. And you won’t believe how rude the old git was when I asked what was going on. Said if I didn’t like his prices, he’d slip cyanide into my vulneraries!”

“Did he now.” Hubert stroked his chin. Those who slither in the dark rarely made an effort to copy their targets’ personalities, so sharp shifts in behavior and interest were often a solid indicator that someone had been replaced by an agent. It seemed that Kronya had been speaking truthfully about Albus von Barlowe.

Unfortunately.

The merchant continued to rant. “And the other thing is, he used to have a little wooden statue of Saint Cichol on his counter. I asked him what happened to it and he said he _burned_ it! I’m not a religious woman, but who just _abandons_ their faith in the saints as easily as they were snapping their fingers?”

“Perhaps it was infested with termites,” Hubert replied. “Anyway, thank you for your time. You’ve been very helpful.” He rummaged in his coin purse and set about two dozen gold coins on the counter. “A token of my appreciation, ma’am, since I was not intending to buy anything.”

The merchant was all too happy to pocket the coins. “Would that all you students were such gentlemen. Anyway, if you see that dastard, give him a right sock in the family jewels for me.”

Hubert laughed darkly as he turned around and headed out. “I cannot promise that, I’m afraid. But I will try to… talk some sense into him.”

“Righto. Goddess bless you. And get some bloody sleep, boy! You look like death!”

As he left the shops, Hubert broke into a run, barreling through the monastery to his quarters. He’d anticipated that the apothecary may have been an unwitting accomplice, but a full-blown agent of _them?_ Caspar and Linhardt had been lucky to escape with their lives; _he_ would have to deal with this rogue agent himself.

He reached his room, began rifling through his collection of poisons to choose a suitable weapon, and suddenly realized two important things.

Firstly, that he hadn’t heard so much as a peep out of Caspar lately.

Secondly, that there was something sharp pressing into the small of his back.

 _“Hubert,”_ Ferdinand growled in his ear, _“tell me what is going on here—the_ truth— _or else I will have to do something I will regret.”_

“And what, pray tell, is that?” Hubert asked slyly, slowly lifting his hands off his collection.

Ferdinand pressed the sharp tip against his back with just a little more force. A part of Hubert doubted the man had it in him to stab him in the back, but perhaps Ferdinand von Aegir truly _was_ his father’s son.

“Why don’t you tell me what _you_ think I’m doing?” Hubert asked.

“Stand up first. Step away from the poisons.”

Hubert stood up and took a step backward, still holding up his hands in a show of cooperation while mentally taking stock of every means for self-defense he had available. “Is this better?”

“Yes. Thank you, Hubert.” Ferdinand cleared his throat. “Now… I think you orchestrated all of this.”

“What do you mean by that?” Hubert asked as innocently as he could muster. Instead, he only sounded more threatening.

“Lady Edelgard’s disappearance. I think you poisoned her cup, then switched it with mine to throw us all off and make us think we were chasing an assassin—and, of course, to rid yourself of me as well. Therefore, Edelgard went into hiding _on your recommendation,_ at which point you sent a notice to the Imperial Palace. But then you realized that as long as Edelgard was still only in hiding, she could show up again and ruin your plan. You had to make her disappear for real. And so you did, and you left her bloodstained clothes out to prove that she was… gone.”

“And why would I do that?”

“To end the Hresvelg family line. Without an heir, Emperor Ionius could be forced to abdicate and leave the last vestiges of his authority to the Vestra family, or any of the other high-ranking nobles in the imperial court. That’s what you want, isn’t it? All those times you spat at me over what my father did to the Emperor, you were merely projecting.”

Hubert felt his gorge rise at the mere implication that he was anything like his father. “Are you trying to enrage me on purpose?” he asked. “The Vestra family has served the Hresvelg family for one thousand years. My father’s legacy is the sole black mark on the ledger lines of our devotion. Why would I carry on in _his_ footsteps?”

“I do not know your heart, Hubert,” Ferdinand said. “Only your wicked ways. Now answer me these questions. What have you done with Lady Edelgard, Caspar, and Linhardt?”

“May I ask a question of you first, Ferdinand?” Hubert asked.

“I believe that’s only fair.”

“What are you planning on doing that you’ll regret?”

The sharp pressure digging into the small of his back slipped away. Hubert looked over his shoulder, spying out of the corner of his eye a blurry, carrot-colored splotch, then slowly turned around to see Ferdinand menacing him with a butter knife.

“Showing you that this is all I have to threaten you with,” Ferdinand answered with a weak, self-effacing grin that didn’t reach his eyes.

“I do not wish to believe what I just told you,” he said. “I wish to believe that the hatred you have for your father’s sins is as great as mine, and that you would not betray Lady Edelgard. Thus, I implore you to tell me the truth.” The look on his face was plaintive and fragile; to a man with less control over his emotions than Hubert, it may have been almost heartbreakingly earnest.

Hubert began to laugh. He couldn’t help himself. It was the kind of laugh that made his shoulders quake and his chest heave and his sides hurt. He had to struggle to contain himself lest he double over and start rolling on the floor.

Ferdinand chuckled in return, his mood lightening. “I had you, though. Did I not?”

Hubert caught his breath and shook his head, still smirking with amusement. “From the moment you caught me, I was already counting up the ways I could kill you, whether or not you had a real knife,” he assured Ferdinand.

He slowly backed away to the door, Ferdinand’s roving eyes and the butter knife gripped in his steady hand following him across the room, and went to close it—only to find Dorothea and Petra glaring at him from beyond the threshold.

“Ah. I see.” Hubert stepped back and beckoned the girls in. “You would have regretted needing backup as well, wouldn’t you, Ferdinand?”

Petra crossed her arms. “So, Hubert, are you ready to be telling truths to us now?”

“Why, certainly,” Hubert said. “You’ve earned it.”

Not _all_ of it, of course, and a liberally sanitized version, but at the very least, a truth that exculpated him. That was all his classmates needed, after all. No need to make things needlessly complicated or raise any uncomfortable questions.

* * *

Morning dragged on, and Byleth already felt weary just from running around the monastery, let alone carrying the weight of the two missing students—her own students—on her shoulders.

“Greetings, Professor!” the gatekeeper chirped as she passed by the front gate of the monastery, just as he did every morning. “Nothing to report!” He paused. “Although,” he added, a tinge of melancholy seeping into his voice, “that’s not really a good thing in this situation, is it?”

Byleth shook her head. No news most certainly was not good news.

“I hope they find Lady Edelgard safe and sound. You and the rest of her class must be worried sick. And the Emperor, too… do you think he knows yet? How long does it take news to reach Enbarr?”

“I’m sure Edelgard’s just run off to find some peace and quiet,” Byleth hollowly assured him.

The gatekeeper sighed. “I guess. Being the imperial heir must be really stressful. Still, leaving behind a bloody pile of clothes is a little extreme, isn’t it?”

She shrugged. “If it stops people from trying to find you…”

“Guess you’ve got to look on the bright side, huh?” He mustered a weak grin. “Well, I’ll pray for her safety. And I’ll let you know if I see anything suspicious!”

Byleth wished the gatekeeper well and went on her way. The looming ocean of thick gray clouds threatened rain as they had yesterday, but the air was dry now and sunbeams cut through small gaps in the canopy almost as if to spotlight small portions of the monastery. It was weather that lifted the spirits of the knights searching the area, although most of them admitted that after yesterday’s heavy rain, any evidence that could point to Edelgard being spirited away from the monastery would have been washed away.

“What were _those_ answers?” Sothis asked as she floated at Byleth’s side. “Keep talking like that and they will think _you_ did it.”

Sothis was a fey child of about twelve or thirteen, perhaps, with an elfin face and a mane of curly emerald green hair as long as she was tall spilling out behind her like twin waterfalls. She hovered just a few inches off the ground no matter where she went, never strayed farther than foot or two from Byleth’s side, was completely insubstantial as far as any people or objects were concerned, and could neither be seen nor heard by anybody except for Byleth; and yet if Byleth called her a ghost, she would get an earful and then some. Sothis was most certainly _not_ a ghost by her own admission; Byleth therefore thought of her as either a spirit or a sort of hallucination, though she didn’t dare call her _that._

 _Maybe I did,_ Byleth replied in her thoughts. While Sothis certainly liked to chat, she herself had no need to speak out loud to her in return. If she did, after all, people would think she’d gone mad.

“What? You did it while my back was turned?” Sothis laid back and rested her arms behind her head as though sleeping in an invisible hammock as her intangible tether to Byleth carried her along. “Were that so, I would be most impressed. Still, though, try to avoid implicating yourself. Turning back time is ever so exhausting.” She yawned. “You were quite foolish to overuse my powers yesterday. And for what? A perfect teatime with Seteth?”

 _I wanted to leave as favorable an impression as possible for my performance review,_ Byleth told her.

“I must say, though, if there _is_ something between you and him, then you do have commendable taste in men.”

_You think he’s handsome?_

“What? No!” Sothis sputtered indignantly, slipping from her repose and balling her fists. “And that is beside the point! If you are going to use my powers to better curry peoples’ favor, then at least do it _sparingly!_ It’s exhausting!”

Byleth considered telling Sothis that _she_ had brought up Seteth, not her, but decided not to push her any further. _Fair enough. I’m sorry._

“That is more like it,” Sothis said, the ire fading from her face as her mouth curled in a smarmy, catlike smile. “I appreciate and accept your apology.”

_“Professor! Professor!”_

Byleth whirled around to find Alois jogging toward her, his partial suit of armor clanking with every step. _“Professor!”_ he called out a third and final time as he caught up to her, resting his burly, calloused hands on his knees and panting for breath.

“Alois? What is it?” Byleth asked. She had reason to be concerned, but Alois was such a genial and pleasant man that he could have easily been asking her to visit him and his wife for tea, so she wasn’t sure what to expect. Infinitely excitable, unwavering in his enthusiasm, relentlessly positive—if ever there was a man tailor-made to lift others’ spirits, it was him. Yet he didn’t sound as though he came with good news.

“We found something in the cellar. I think you should see.”

An icy current of fear gripped Byleth’s still and silent heart as Alois led her to the cellar beneath the dining hall, lighting a lantern at the stairs and leading her down.

The cellar was as large as one would expect for a monastery with so many mouths to feed. Even with the lantern lit, the far walls were still shrouded in darkness. Sacks of grains and oats lined the floor, jars of canned fruits and vegetables lined the shelves, and oaken kegs of beer and casks of wine (while the Officers Academy did not permit students, even ones of age, to have alcohol, brewing and selling beer was a monastic tradition that the Church embraced with open arms).

“Watch your step,” Alois warned as he took a long stride down the last step. “Cyril set a few mousetraps down here the other day.” He chuckled. “They’re better at catching toes than mice, though, I’d say.”

Byleth gingerly stepped around the traps and followed the path of Alois’ outstretched arm and the light from his lantern, her gaze sweeping across the floor and halting on a crumpled scarlet nightgown and half of a student’s uniform.

“Dunno who the nightie belongs to,” Alois admitted, nudging it with his foot as though scared it might bite. “But look at this blouse here.” He crouched down and picked up the black blouse, his rough fingers slipping past the gold thread that traced the uniform’s epaulets. “And there’s a hooded undershirt with it, just like what poor Bernadetta wears! What lecherous fiend would drag her all the way down here and disrobe her?” he asked, shuddering. “I know finding Edelgard takes top priority, but the poor girl must be terrified…”

Sothis peered at the blouse and the nightgown in turn. “Byleth, that gown is the same one that Dorothea let Edelgard borrow yesterday, is it not?”

Byleth nodded. She recalled seeing Edelgard wearing it when she’d done a sweep of the dormitories yesterday afternoon.

“There is something amiss about these clothes,” Sothis mused, thoughtfully twirling a lock of her emerald hair around her finger.

 _Only half of Bernadetta’s uniform is here?_ Byleth offered.

“No, no, that makes sense. Ever since the poor thing became the world’s largest rodent, she has been, er… indecent from the waist down.” Sothis squinted. “I cannot put my finger on it, but something does not add up…”

Byleth racked her brain. Now that Sothis had mentioned it, there _was_ something odd about those clothes. She knelt beside Alois and took the blouse from him. “It’s not wet,” she said.

“Hmm?” Alois turned his head, thinking she had been talking to him. “What do you mean, Professor?”

“If Bernadetta was brought here from her room yesterday,” she reasoned, “her clothes would have been soaked by the rain.”

“Of course! And yet her clothes are bone dry,” Alois mused. He clapped Byleth on the shoulder. “Sharp as a tack, just like your old man. I’m sure you can figure out what to make of that. Now, I must get back to searching for Edelgard, but… well, I figured Bernadetta would be important to you as well.”

“All my students are important to me.”

“Oh, of course, of course. I didn’t mean to imply otherwise.” Alois gave her another hearty, meaty slap on the shoulder. “What I mean is… leave the princess to us knights and focus your attention on her. She needs her professor, too!”

Byleth nodded. “I understand. Thank you, Alois.”

“Don’t mention it. You can always count on me to stick my neck out for Jeralt Eisner’s kid!” Alois set the lantern on the floor, stood up, and headed for the stairs. “Feel free to investigate down here as long as you’d like, Profess— _ow, ffff—”_

Byleth glanced over her shoulder and saw Alois hopping on one leg with a mousetrap clamped around the toe of his boot, his face scrunched up and tomato-red. _“I’m fine,”_ he hissed through gritted teeth, limping up the stairs sheepishly.

“Hmm.” Sothis scratched her chin and studied the cellar. “I wonder what other clues we can find here. Perhaps, for example,” she said, gesturing at a shape in the darkness, “that ladder is a clue.”

Byleth angled the lantern in the direction of Sothis’ extended hand, revealing a foldable stepladder resting against a cask of ale. _You mean that stepladder?_ she asked Sothis.

“What difference is there? A stepladder is a ladder. A ladder is a stepladder.”

_A stepladder is on hinges and a ladder—_

“Details, details!” Sothis exclaimed with a dismissive wave of her hand. “Trouble yourself not with these trifles and look instead at the basic nature of things, Byleth. And stop judging things based on your narrow-minded cultural assumptions.”

Byleth rolled her eyes.

“I have changed my mind,” Sothis announced. “The ladder is not a clue after all.”

Byleth continued her inspection of the discarded clothes. How could anyone have dragged both Edelgard and Bernadetta down here without getting their clothes wet? Or, for that matter, without anybody seeing them pass through the dining hall and the kitchen?

“Perhaps Edelgard and Bernadetta were never in this room at all. Perhaps the culprit stole their clothes and planted them down here to mislead us,” Sothis said, evidently thinking the same thing Byleth was thinking. “They could have hidden the clothes under their cloak to keep them dry.”

 _Either way,_ Byleth told her, _they aren’t here now._ She lifted the lantern and eyed the rest of the cellar as the faintly pulsing light made the shadows ebb and flow like the tides. There were no doors to any other rooms. Save for the trapdoor above, there was no way in or out. The room was a dead end.

“Yes, that is true. And either way, the culprit must have been truly depraved to strip those girls naked. What kind of perverse, lecherous, skirt-chasing skunk would—” Sothis’ eyes lit up. She gasped. _“Sylvain Gautier!”_

Byleth shook her head. ‘Skirt-chaser’ and ‘kidnapper’ were rarely synonymous. Besides, the only physical altercations Sylvain’s libido had gotten him into had been very one-sided, and not in his favor—he wasn’t far off from having a permanent handprint as red as his hair tattooed on his cheek.

“Well, we should at least question him,” Sothis pouted, crossing her arms. “He could have seen something or heard something. And who is the girl next door to Bernadetta’s room? She should be questioned as well.”

 _I agree,_ Byleth replied. She stood up, raising the lantern higher—

And spied something glittering.

She made her way to the stepladder Sothis had pointed out, the lantern swinging in her hand and casting rippling shadows. “What are you doing?” Sothis asked her. “I was _jesting_ about the ladder being a clue!”

Byleth knelt beside the ladder, reached down, and plucked a small, teardrop-shaped glass vial off the floor.

“I mean, I saw that as well. I was merely testing you,” Sothis clarified. She stifled a yawn with her hand and laid down on the floor, or rather, a few inches above the floor. “I grow tired,” she added, her voice cracking from weariness as she began to fade away. “Awaken me when you have found something else interesting.”

And with that, she vanished, retreating into the depths of Byleth’s mind and leaving her alone.

Byleth headed up the stairs and made her way back through the dining hall—abuzz with students speculating about Edelgard’s fate—and into the courtyard. Next to the gloom of the cellar, the sunlight was garish and blinding; she held up her hand to her brow and squinted as her eyes adjusted.

_“Ah! Professor Eisner, I’ve been looking for you.”_

Seteth’s voice caught her off guard; she hastily straightened up and did an about-face to meet him.

“Doing your part in the investigation, I take it?” he asked.

Byleth nodded. “Of course, sir. Two of my students.”

“I can only imagine how devastated you must feel.” Seteth shifted uncomfortably. “Alois just spoke to me and said that some of Bernadetta’s belongings were found in the kitchen cellar. Have you been there?”

Byleth nodded again and handed the strange teardrop-shaped bottle to him. “I found this.”

Seteth took the bottle and examined it closely, scratching the emerald green chinstrap beard that traced his regal jawline. “Strange. I will have to see what Professor Hanneman makes of this. Now, I’ve been meaning to question your students, but I haven’t seen a single one of the Black Eagles all morning.” The look in his eyes was stern and utterly merciless. “You wouldn’t happen to know where all your remaining students are right now, would you, Professor?”

Byleth felt her heart drop into her stomach.

* * *

If Linhardt had told Caspar once, he’d told him a thousand times—Albus’ ledger was far too heavy for a pair of mice to carry, let alone _one,_ and it would be for the best if he left it behind. Yet Caspar had insisted that they drag it out of the apothecary, slowing their progress to a crawl. All night, counting breaks for food and rest, they hadn’t even made it out of town.

“We aren’t going to bring this all the way back to the monastery with us, are we?” Linhardt asked.

“We have to; it’s evidence,” Caspar answered as he struggled to pull the book out of a rut between two cobblestones. Linhardt had long since refused to do his part, on the suspicion that this was all a plot by Caspar to get him to do weight training with him, leaving Caspar to drag the book by himself. He’d hoped that the fruitless exertion would eventually convince Caspar of his folly, but there seemed to be very little capable of making him do that.

“You don’t think they’ll take the word of a pair of talking mice?” Linhardt asked.

“Would _you?”_

“If a mouse spoke to me in a human tongue, yes, of course I would listen. Besides, at this rate, it’ll take us _days_ to reach the monastery.” Linhardt yawned. “Did you know that the average mouse sleeps for twelve and a half hours each day?” He was already starting to fade again, though whether that was from hunger or exhaustion, he couldn’t quite tell.

“Wow, you must be _loving_ this.” With herculean effort, Caspar dislodged the books and continued on his way with plodding, elephantine slowness. “Well, _this_ mouse _doesn’t_ sleep for twelve hours— _Ow!”_ He let out a pained yelp as the book slipped from his grasp and pinned his tail to the ground. “Soon as I find something sharp, I’m cutting this damn thing off!” he hissed, struggling to yank it free.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Linhardt said, deigning to lift the book just a little so Caspar could free himself. “Mice, like most animals, need their tails for balance.”

“I’ve gone most of my life without a tail and my balance has been fine,” Caspar retorted. “It’s almost like you _like_ being a mouse.”

“Not necessarily. It’s simply an interesting, novel experience.”

“You _hate_ interesting, novel experiences.”

“Only when they aren’t educational. Anyway, let’s think this through,” Linhardt said, rubbing his tired eyes. “If we’re too slow, Albus might catch us again.”

“That’s bad,” Caspar conceded, scratching at the short, spiky blue fur cresting his head. It really was almost _amusing_ how much he still looked like himself despite being a mouse from tip to toe.

“On top of that, if Hubert really _is_ working for the bad guys, we can’t just leave him alone with the others. A warning isn’t any good if it comes too late.”

“I get it, but, we can’t let that creep get his hands on these and destroy the evidence,” Caspar said.

“Well, perhaps if we hid the ledger somewhere here, then scurried unencumbered to the monastery, and then came back to retrieve it…”

“And leave it where anyone can find it?”

“No, Cas, that’s why we _hide—”_ Linhardt buried his face in his paws and scratched his forehead. All this fur _itched._ “Never mind. What if we hitched a ride on a wagon headed for the monastery? Then we’d reach the others much faster, and we’d have the book with us.”

Caspar thought for a second, scratching his whiskers. “Huh. That might work.”

Linhardt scanned the horizon. “Here’s one,” he said, gesturing to a wagon looming in the distance. It was ahead just a few… Yards? Furlongs? Distance was impossible to judge when one was three inches tall. It was a building away, he decided, which was trivial for a human but very far for a pair of mice lugging a book behind them to travel.

The two of them inched their way toward the wagon with agonizing slowness, eventually slipping between the mud-stained hooves of its horses. As inconvenient as it was in so many ways, Linhardt had to admit that seeing the world from this perspective was enlightening. There were so many small details—of bricks, of cobblestones, of animals and insects passing by, of bricks and mortars, of machinery and vehicles, that one simply couldn’t possibly notice from a human perspective and that looked so awe-inspiring from a mouse’s perspective. Mice certainly did have their privileges. He wished he could slip under the wagon and stare at its wooden ribs all day, and maybe even do a few sketches.

 _“Wait a minute,”_ Caspar suddenly hissed, dropping the book and sticking his head out between the spokes of the cart’s wheels. He let out an elated laugh. “Lin! Look!”

Linhardt hurried to his side and looked out. “What is it?”

Caspar gestured to a pair of oddly familiar boots with his paw. “There! We’re saved!”

Linhardt looked up and followed the familiar pair of boots all the way up to a familiar face framed by a familiar mop of hair that was (probably) as red as a carrot (all other things aside, he wasn’t too keen on the colorblindness). Behind that familiar face were two more faces, equally familiar.

“It’s Ferdinand!” Caspar cried out, scurrying over to the book and heaving it out of the shadow of the wagon. “And Dorothea! And Petra! They came here looking for us! We’re saved! _Ferdinand! It’s me, Caspar! Down here!”_

Linhardt followed Caspar out, his own spirits lifting just as much as his companion’s, just as a second familiar person stepped out in front of Ferdinand, a cold lunar shadow eclipsing the fiery sun.

 _“The apothecary should be in the town square,”_ Hubert said, his voice booming. _“This way.”_

“Oh, shit.” Caspar’s whiskers trembled. He rushed with redoubled speed and effort toward Ferdinand, abandoning the book. _“Ferdinand! Ferdinand, down here! It’s us, Caspar and Linhardt! We got turned into mice! It’s a trap!”_

Linhardt panted as he caught up with Caspar. “I… don’t think they can hear you, Cas.” The rest of their classmates loomed over them like titans, just as impassive toward and ignorant of the tiny lives scurrying around their feet as towering stone colossi.

“But I’m shouting at the top of my lungs!” Caspar cupped his paws around his snout. _“Ferdinand! Down here, you ass! Hubert’s the bad guy! Dorothea! Petra!”_

“Yes, but your lungs are tiny!” Linhardt retorted, grabbing him by the shoulder. “Your voice doesn’t carry; it probably all just sounds like squeaks to them anyway.”

“Squeaks? But my voice hasn’t changed at all, and neither has yours!”

“Perhaps we only _think_ we sound like ourselves. After all, our ears have changed, too. Anyway, we need another way to catch their attention.”

“I’ll climb up Ferdie’s trousers and scream in his ear. That’ll get him. Lin, you distract Hubert. Set his cloak on fire or something.” Caspar took a running leap at Ferdinand, hooked his claws into his pants, and scurried up his uniform like a sailor deftly weaving through a ship’s rigging. It was an incredible feat of acrobatics that Linhardt was sure Caspar wouldn’t be able to pull off as a human.

Hubert immediately spied him and snatched him off Ferdinand’s shirt. _“Well, well, what do we have here?”_

 _“H-Hey! Hubie, be gentle!”_ Dorothea chided him. _“You don’t know_ who _that could be!”_

 _“It could be_ anyone,”Hubert said with a wicked smile as he lifted Caspar up by the scruff of his neck. _“It could be, for example, a sinister little slitherer reporting on our actions to its master…”_

Linhardt sighed. Well, it looked like he was setting Hubert’s cloak on fire.

* * *

No matter how bad things got, Caspar was starting to realize that things could always be worse. But having to stare at Hubert’s ugly mug blown up to the size of a small house while dangling from the scruff of his neck _had_ to be rock bottom.

“…Or,” Hubert added with a wry, shit-eating smirk, “it could be Caspar.”

 _“You’re damn right it’s me!”_ Caspar shouted out as he writhed and struggled to wriggle out of his grasp. _“Let me down so I can kick your ass!”_

“What? How can you tell?” Ferdinand asked, evidently completely oblivious to anything Caspar was saying. Linhardt had been right. All anyone else could hear was squeaking.

“You can’t see the resemblance? He hardly looks any different than normal.”

_“Oh, fuck you, Hubert!”_

“And he’s just as chatty, it seems.”

The next thing Caspar knew, a much softer pair of hands had wrapped around him; he found himself wrenched free of Hubert’s grip and staring up at a face that was much easier on the eyes.

“That’s enough,” Dorothea said sternly. “I know you’re upset about Edie, but there’s no need to take your anger out on the rest of us.”

“Dorothea is right,” Petra said. “Lady Edelgard would not be wanting you to act like this.”

Caspar sighed in relief. Thank the Goddess not all of his classmates were cut from the same treacherous cloth as Hubert von Vestra. Now he just had to figure out how to make them hear and understand him…

Dorothea’s fingers curled around him; the next thing he knew, she was squeezing him half to death and rubbing her thumb _very_ vigorously against his cheek. “Oh, Cas, you poor thing! Don’t you worry; I’ll keep you safe from mean old Hubert,” she said, speaking to him in the kind of syrupy falsetto one usually used when speaking to cats and babies. “Oh, I can’t imagine how you must be feeling right now… poor Caspar…”

“Manhandled, mostly,” Caspar squeaked as she smothered him. Any more pressure and he feared his throbbing little heart would shoot right out of his ribcage like a cannonball.

He’d changed his mind. _This_ was rock bottom.

“Dorothea, you are being too rough,” Petra said, lightly grabbing her by the arm. “Animals have thoughts and feelings, just like people.”

“I _am_ people!” Caspar insisted, his words once more falling on deaf ears. But Dorothea mercifully eased up on him.

“That just leaves the matter of Linhardt,” Ferdinand mused, scratching his chin. “If only Caspar could talk to us…”

“I highly doubt that a complete transformation _wouldn’t_ rob one of the ability to speak,” Hubert said. “Perhaps if we gave him a pen and paper…”

“Or you could try _listening,”_ Caspar croaked, his voice hoarse from all the shouting he’d been doing.

“Wait,” Petra said. “I think he is trying to speak, but his voice is being too small. It is hard, but we must be focusing. It is like squinting with your ears.”

Caspar let out a relieved laugh. Who’d have thought that _Petra_ of all people would have come through for him given all the bad blood between their families? “Finally someone gets it! Petra, I don’t think I’ve ever said anything bad about you before, but if I did, I take it back!”

Petra smiled. “I am thanking you, Caspar. Now can you tell us where Linhardt is?”

“Knowing him, I’m certain that wherever he is, he’s sleeping,” Hubert said. “I suggest we—”

He stopped in mid-sentence, tore his black cloak off, and stomped viciously on a smoldering patch of its hem, grinding it into the road.

“Ahem. Excuse me,” he said, picking his cloak back up and shaking it clean before throwing it back over his shoulders. “Somebody has just tried to set me on fire.”


	4. Parochial Affairs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bernadetta opens up to Edelgard. Claude makes a new friend. Edelgard rides eternal, shiny and chrome. Hubert loses his cool.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, what a day! Oh, what a lovely day!
> 
> Whew! This was a tough chapter to write. There were so many plot beats I wanted to make sure I hit and before I knew it I was staying up until 2 AM polishing off a 22k word monster! I hope those words are worth reading! Time to die historic on the ~~fury~~ furry road!

Edelgard’s sleep was normally fitful and unpleasant, but the night passed her by with little incident upon her return to the camp—what few nightmares had troubled her faded away with merciful swiftness. Matthias had been disappointed that she refused to rest in the room he had offered her and Bernadetta, but had accepted her reasoning with little complaint when she had concocted the excuse that it was safer to sleep out in the open where one could flee in any direction than to sleep in a room with only one exit.

When the last gasps of her omnipresent nightmares bled from her memory, leaving her feeling for the first time in days as though she had actually _slept,_ she woke up huddled under a thick, frayed cotton blanket, her fresh bruises still throbbing. Her ribs, in particular, where that crocheting needle had slammed into her abdomen with the force of a battering ram, pulsed with a warm ache that went so deep that she could feel it in her backbone beneath the rough, heavy bandages wrapped around her torso. Her stomach groaned and growled with hunger as well; it was nearly impossible to separate the two unique pains.

Although the sounds of the already-bustling camp filling her ears had roused her, she did not open her eyes. If she kept her eyes closed, she could pretend everyone around her was human.

As her consciousness returned, she found herself slipping into a contemplative mood. She still felt the last vestiges of the rush of adrenaline she had felt in battle last night. It had been just what she had needed. It had assuaged some of her worst fears. At the moment she’d picked up that axe, she’d felt invigorated, just as she always did in combat. The weapon’s weight had felt almost natural in her grip, and the gentle resistance of her foe’s muscle and sinew as it had parted under the sharp blade had been all too familiar to her. All those feelings rushing through her in the moment she had struck down her foe, the power of her Crests surging through her veins and singing through her blood—yes, they were _hers._ They belonged to the Edelgard von Hresvelg she remembered being, in spite of her regrettable size and shape.

Satisfied, she pushed herself to open her eyes. As she took stock of herself, she was more than a little disheartened to look down at her hands only to see clawed paws, her pink skin dusted with a sparse brushing of fine white fur. Though she knew better than to hope she was dreaming, it still stung nevertheless to face the reality of her situation.

At least she wasn’t a rat, she told herself.

Bernadetta was curled up by her side, her cheek resting against her shoulder (thankfully, not the one she’d dislocated, which still ached). Dubiously-clean off-white cloth wrapped around her upper arm and her thigh, both stained with blossoms of bloody blotches that had dried to a nearly black crust. Though the throbbing ache of the heavy bruises she’d sustained begged to differ, Edelgard had to admit that as far as injuries went, Bernadetta had gotten the worst of it.

Edelgard found that it had slowly become easier to look at her and touch her without flinching or feeling her stomach heave, though she couldn’t quite understand _why._ Perhaps it was simply that her growing familiarity with Bernadetta’s new form had slowly starved the flames of her fear of the kindling they needed to burn.

Bernadetta leaned unconsciously into her, her whiskers gently tickling her cheek. Normally, Edelgard wouldn’t accept such an incursion into her personal space, but it was far preferable to being petted, she supposed. Now that she was getting used to it, there was something oddly soothing about that softness and weight at her side. It was like…

She shook her head. If word ever got out that she normally slept with a little stuffed bear tucked under her arm, she would never live it down. Even Hubert didn’t know she had a stuffed animal hidden in her room—and if he knew that the bear was a gift from Professor Byleth, he doubtless would ask her to dispose of it lest she grow too _attached_ to her teacher.

Bernadetta couldn’t have put herself in this situation by choice, Edelgard reasoned. She must have been beyond exhausted to have fallen asleep next to her without every anxious cell in her brain sounding deafening alarms. Nevertheless, those alarms would likely begin to ring the instant she woke up, so Edelgard gingerly extracted herself from under the blanket, careful not to disturb her, and gently lowered her to the floor.

Bernadetta’s eyes fluttered open, her slumber broken by the sudden movement. _“Ed… el…”_ she mumbled wearily. Then her eyes shot open, her body stiffening as she jolted awake. _“Lady Edelgard!_ W-What did I do?” she gasped, shooting bolt-upright. “I’m not in trouble, am I? Are you going to have me killed?”

What an imagination this girl had! What could have happened to this girl, burgeoning with so much talent as she was, for her to be such a nervous wreck in spite of all that? What had been done to her to crush her self-esteem so thoroughly? So long as Edelgard had to rely on her, she had to do _something_ about it.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Edelgard told her. “You looked cold, so I went to adjust your blanket.”

“Oh. Sorry.” Bernadetta sighed, grabbing the corner of the blanket and wrapping it around herself. “Thank you.”

“Why are you so eager to apologize? Half the things you say you’re sorry for aren’t even your fault.”

“I know you don’t like it. I’m s—I mean, n-never mind…”

“You need to have more confidence in yourself if others are to rely on you,” Edelgard told her, pulling herself to her feet and adjusting her cloak. “Perhaps you should start by refusing to apologize to anybody for an entire day. Perhaps… today.”

“A whole _day?_ But—But what if I do something _wrong?!”_ Bernadetta asked, mortified.

“Oh, it’s easy. Simply say, ‘the results of my actions were regrettable’ or ‘I see my behavior has had unexpected consequences’ or something else to show that you were certain of your righteousness in the moment. Moral certainty is the most important attribute a leader can project. You cannot let your subordinates see you in a moment of weakness,” she said, fully aware that in these past few days Bernadetta had seen her in _many_ moments of weakness.

“Um… okay.”

Edelgard felt her stomach crumple under the weight of her hunger. She’d been too preoccupied before to really pay it any mind, but it was so strong now that she felt weak in the knees. “Let us find something to eat… perhaps they have something special in reserve for their ‘prophesied savior’ and her cohort.”

Bernadetta wearily stood up, unsteady on her feet. Like Edelgard, she hadn’t eaten since yesterday’s lunch. She nodded.

The other mice in the camp gave the two of them a wide berth. The younger ones and older ones alike stared in awe as Edelgard passed them by—awed by what, exactly, she could only guess. Perhaps her outburst last night had frightened them; perhaps Matthias and his overeager brother had spent the morning spinning a tale of last night’s skirmish that elevated it from a simple struggle for survival to a mythic battle between titans.

Though she still had reservations about the trustworthiness of her hosts, last night’s encounter with those hostile mice clad in such strange garb told her that whatever _these_ mice were, they were no friends of those who slither in the dark. That wasn’t to say, of course, that she wasn’t planning on leaving as soon as possible. As soon as she and Bernadetta were fed and rested, they would cut a path to the surface posthaste. The parochial concerns of these mice were of no consequence compared to the damage her disappearance could inflict on the Empire if she dawdled down here.

She felt her tail slither across the floor behind her and shuddered. It was such an _unnerving_ feeling—that part of her body that _just didn’t make sense,_ that she _just couldn’t describe._ The more she tried to think about it, the odder it felt. She couldn’t quite control it—it seemed to have a mind of its own, really—but she felt everything it felt, as though it were a passenger in her brain. She had to do something to keep it out of her way, so she took it in her paws, wrapped it around her waist like a belt, cinched it, and started to thread its tip into a knot—

It _hurt,_ hurt as though she’d twisted her own arm. Wincing, she let go and let her aching tail droop to the floor. Much to her dismay, it really _was_ a part of her, as much as her arms or legs were.

“Hello there, Edelgard,” Matthias said, popping up seemingly out of thin air with a load of large, shriveled, vaguely fruit-shaped lumps cradled in his paws. “What were you doing with your tail?”

“Nothing,” Edelgard answered. It felt oddly humbling to admit to herself that unlike all of the mice surrounding her, she was a total stranger to this body she’d been forced to occupy. Even Bernadetta was more comfortable with her tail than she was.

“Ah, I thought you were trying to make a fashion statement or something. Did you sleep well?”

“Fine,” Bernadetta said, yawning.

“Surprisingly, not terribly,” Edelgard said. “Do you have food?”

“Right to the point, huh? Yeah, I bet you two must be starved after last night.” Matthias handed one of the oddly-shaped lumps to Edelgard. “Right. Here you go. Should tide you two over ‘til lunchtime.”

Edelgard looked down at the rocks. No, they were oddly soft and leathery, more like raisins. “These are…”

“They’re rocks?” Bernadetta asked.

“They’re _berries,”_ Matthias said, incredulous. “What, never seen a strawberry before?”

“Oh.” Bernadetta took one of them. “They’re dried out…”

“Yeah, they keep longer that way. You don’t expect to find any _fresh_ fruit down here, do you?”

“I suppose not,” Edelgard said, taking one of the smaller berries and biting into it. Just like any other dried fruit, it was chewy, leathery, and a little tough, but all the flavor was there. Next to the hours of gut-churning hunger she’d endured, it was as sweet as the most decadent dessert; the taste was so overwhelming that she nearly felt dizzy.

“Thank you. We appreciate your hospitality.” Her voice came out as more of a gasp than she’d intended.

“This is so nice of you,” Bernadetta said between nibbles. “Thank you so much!”

“Glad you like them,” Matthias said. “Zeke and I almost lost our tails bringing those down from the surface. First we had to run up there and pick ‘em. Then we had to find a spot to dry ‘em. Then we had to check up on ‘em every day for a few days. Then we had to bring ‘em back down here…”

“Perilous work, I’d imagine,” Edelgard said, nibbling the berry with reckless abandon. Her stomach begged for more. She had half a mind to shove the whole thing into her mouth. It was far from the most dignified way to feed herself (of course, being a mouse, dignity was in short supply all around), but she had to eat.

“Oh, perilous, yes. You wouldn’t begin to imagine the peril.” Matthias led her and Bernadetta away to some secluded corner of the camp so they could eat in peace. “Shame. The surface is such a beautiful place when those great, big, ugly brutes aren’t milling about.”

“Y-You mean those rats from last night?” Bernadetta asked.

“No, humans. And their cats. Mostly their cats.” Matthias sighed. “It’s too bad. It’d be nice to live up there, like my great-great-great grandpa did. We even had those—what’s it called when a bunch of folks live in one place, but they all have their own little buildings?”

“A town?” Bernadetta asked.

“No, bigger.”

“A city?”

“Yeah! A city!” Matthias scratched his cheek. “We had cities. Grand old things tucked away in the forgotten parts of Garreg Mach. A couple on the surface. A couple set up in the catacombs. A couple down here. One way up high in the cathedral, or so they said. Of course, all we really have now are stories my dad heard from my grandpa, that _he_ heard from my great-grandpa, that _he_ heard from my great-great grandpa, and so on, so, y’know, we probably didn’t really have _that_ many, and they probably weren’t _that_ big, and Archbishop Rhea _probably_ didn’t visit us every day and have tea with us…”

Edelgard nearly choked on a mouthful of dried strawberry. _“Rhea?”_ she sputtered. The very image of the archbishop in all her regalia sitting beside a miniature city of mouse-people with a cup of tea held daintily in her hand was the most ridiculous thing she’d ever imagined.

“Your great-great grandpa…” Bernadetta mumbled. “But Lady Rhea looks so… she can’t be _that_ old…”

Matthias shrugged. “I mean, five generations is about six or eight years? And those humans live an awful lot longer than us mousefolk…”

Bernadetta furrowed her brow. “Uh… six or ei—Then how old are _you?”_

“Um…” Matthias started counting his fingers, then his toes. “Uh… let’s see… about ten or eleven months?”

“You’re _one_ year old?”

“Excuse you! I’m not middle-aged yet!” Matthias took a bite of his meager meal. “How old are _you_ two, then?”

“You said your people lost Lady Rhea’s favor,” Edelgard interjected. “What happened?”

“Well, the way dad told it, we got too big for our britches, so she dumped boiling hot tea over the mayor, then set the city on fire, then the next day brought a dozen cats into the monastery to clean up what was left.”

Edelgard nodded bitterly. That fit for what she knew of Rhea—the immortal beast known secretly as the Immaculate One, who had enslaved humanity one thousand years ago and hidden the truth under layers of historical revisionism and propaganda. The mice had likely stopped worshiping her or paying tithes to her (what tithes would mice even pay?) to earn such callous treatment from her.

“Then again, the way _Grandpa_ told it, she just spilled warm tea on the mayor and brought in the cats. So Dad was probably exaggerating a little,” Matthias said. “But she _did_ bring the cats into the monastery. We know that.”

“That’s awful,” Bernadetta said. “I didn’t know Lady Rhea was capable of such malice…”

Matthias shrugged. “I dunno. Maybe we did something to deserve it. Anyway, so the story goes, we lost half of our population in less than a season, and another half over the next year, and so on and so forth. Bit by bit, those of us who survived ended up down here.”

Edelgard set down the half-eaten strawberry. She wasn’t hungry anymore. “How can you be so _casual_ about that?”

“Well, being mad about it isn’t gonna change the fact that it happened, is it?” Matthias asked. “Better to look to the future than cry over the past, eh? Anyway, things are gonna change soon. We’re gonna escape the monastery, and we’ll never have to worry about rats or cats again!”

“You have a plan to escape?” Bernadetta asked.

“I’ve got something _better_ than a plan,” he said, a smug lilt in his voice. “I’ve got a pro—”

 _“Mattie!”_ Zeke’s voice rang out over the background noise of the camp. _“Get over here!”_

“That’s my cue,” he said, his ears perking up and his whiskers twitching as he lifted his head. _“Coming!_ Here, take the rest of the berries,” he added, shoving the other dried berries into Bernadetta’s arm.

Bernadetta fumbled with the berries and dropped them all onto the floor. “Ah! I’m so—u-uh, I mean, th-that was regrettable!”

Matthias gave her a funny look. “Uh… yeah, I guess. Anyway, you two enjoy breakfast; I’ll be right back,” he said, rushing through his words as hastily as he bounded toward the front of the camp, where Edelgard noticed a small crowd was gathering—hopefully around another ‘savior’ for them to fawn over instead of her.

Bernadetta knelt down to collect the berries. “He hates me now,” she moaned. “I should’ve just said I was sorry…”

“Don’t be ridiculous. He doesn’t hate you.” Edelgard helped her with the food. “You shouldn’t disparage yourself so readily.”

“Sorry—I-I mean, that’s… regrettable—Dammit, Bernie! You can’t even keep a promise for an _hour—!”_ she squeaked out angrily.

“Now, now.” Edelgard took her by the arm. “There’s no need to flagellate yourself over every little mistake.”

“So—I’ll t-try harder next time,” Bernadetta sighed, moderating her tone. “It’s just force of habit, I guess. I’m used to doing everything wrong. And I still do. I’m just…” She sighed again, shaking her head. “I’m just no good at anything.”

Edelgard couldn’t help but be taken aback. “It seems you’ve come quite a long way since you were ‘no good’ at anything. It’s high time you start taking pride in your abilities.”

Under her fur, Bernadetta might have blushed. She cringed and turned away. “I-I’d like it if you didn’t make jokes about me, Lady Edelgard.”

Edelgard meant to probe further, but Bernadetta busied herself with her meal so readily that it was obvious she was avoiding further conversation. Eventually, though, the both of them ran out of food, and she picked up where she’d left off. “Were you teased as a child? Were other children cruel to you about your interests?”

“What? No, no—not the _children,”_ Bernadetta stammered.

“The adults, then?” Edelgard probed, leaning in closer.

Bernadetta shook her head with violent vigor. “No! No, o-of course not! It’s just that—You just can’t understand, Lady Edelgard: _you’re_ going to rule the Empire, you’ve been perfect since the day you were born, but I—I was just…”

 _Perfect?_ Edelgard retreated, running a finger through her snow-white hair. Once, it had been a lustrous light brown—before the experiments. “No,” she muttered, “I was _made_ perfect.”

“I—Sometimes I wish _I’d_ been made perfect.” Bernadetta suppressed a small whimper. “Like my father wanted…” she added, an afterthought so quietly-voiced it was barely a whisper.

“Your father?”

“Nothing. Never mind.”

Edelgard’s eyes narrowed. She was hitting close to the core of Bernadetta’s pathological dearth of confidence, she could tell. If she could only draw out a little more…

She circled Bernadetta and laid a paw on her shoulder, staring at her with a cold, imperious gaze. Bernadetta winced and stiffened—the shallow scrapes left by a fork’s tines were too minor to have needed a bandage, but stung nonetheless. “Bernadetta von Varley, as the future Emperor of Adrestia, I command you to tell me what your father did to you.” A thousand possibilities, each more gruesome than the last, swam through her mind. She’d heard too many stories of the depraved things men could do to their own daughters—things that made even _her_ blood run cold.

“Nothing!” Bernadetta couldn’t look her in the eyes. “He didn’t do anything. It’s just… it’s n-not like… I mean… it’s _my_ fault I couldn’t…”

“How so? Explain.”

Was she being cruel? The thought had barely crossed Edelgard’s mind before she snuffed it out like an unwelcome candle. Cruel to be kind, perhaps. Bernadetta was her only trustworthy asset down here and Edelgard needed her at her best—and that meant plumbing the depths of her deep-seated weakness, grasping it by the roots, and ripping it out.

“I…”

Edelgard took her by both shoulders. “Look me in the eyes and tell me.”

“Please leave me alone!” Bernadetta squeaked, and with a flick of her tail she wrenched herself free and scampered away.

Edelgard watched her vanish into the camp and sighed. Perhaps she had come on too strong.

* * *

She spent the better part of the morning, or at least what she thought was morning, weaving through the camp. Considering how unusual Bernadetta looked compared to the rest of the mice, she shouldn’t have been too difficult to find among the crowds, and yet she’d vanished like a ghost. Edelgard hoped she hadn’t left the camp entirely—who knew what other dangers lurked in those shadowy, cavernous halls? She had no interest in letting one of her classmates die down here.

At last, she tracked Bernadetta down to the room Matthias had offered the two of them the other night. Edelgard reached out to brush aside the curtain and then froze, a chill running up her spine. The room still carried too much evil in it—too many memories of her painful days in captivity. Though she doubted she’d faint like last time if she entered, she had to admit that it was far from an ideal place for conversation. _“Clever girl,”_ she muttered.

“Bernadetta,” she called out, “please come out. I know you’re in there.”

Bernadetta gave no response save for a wordless moan.

“I am not upset with you,” Edelgard assured her. “Nor did I mean to frighten you. I only want to speak with you.”

No answer.

“I was…” She took a deep breath. She didn’t understand why she felt so nervous—so many butterflies in her stomach, like a girl struggling to speak with her crush. “I know what you’re hiding. Bernadetta, I, too, was… mistreated as a child. Speak to me. I will understand.”

There it was. She’d ripped her chest open and exposed her beating heart for all to see. She waited with bated breath for Bernadetta’s response.

The curtain fluttered. Bernadetta slowly poked her head out. “Y-You weren’t,” she mumbled in disbelief.

“I was.”

“But you’re so… strong.”

“Do I seem _strong_ to you down here?” Edelgard reached out for her, but Bernadetta quickly slipped back behind the curtain.

“If I tell you, you’ll think I’m weak.”

“I would have to be a fool to think that after everything you’ve done for me thus far.”

“You’d hate me.”

“I don’t have hatred to spare for my classmates.”

“It was my fault.”

“Impossible.”

This went on and on. Bernadetta had a thousand more excuses; Edelgard punctured them one after another but never seemed to get anywhere. “Enough making excuses for your father,” she snapped as she grew weary of the fruitless back-and-forth. “Tell me what he did to you.”

Bernadetta stopped answering.

“…I know you want to tell me,” Edelgard finally said to her once the silence had become unbearable. “You _chose_ to mention your father. You _want_ me to know what he did to you. I can feel it burning within you, yearning, struggling to fight its way out. I know that you’re desperate to tell someone, _anyone,_ to scream to the heavens for all to hear… if only they would listen. That is why you have such a bad habit of voicing your thoughts aloud. Deep down, you want everybody to know the pain you’ve endured, but you’re afraid that no one would believe you, or worse, no one would care.”

She rested her paw against the curtain.

“But I’m listening, Bernadetta. I believe you. I care.”

At last, Bernadetta stepped out from behind the curtain, worn down by Edelgard’s siege tactics. She carried herself as meekly as ever. “He… wanted me to be a good wife,” she admitted, keeping her head bowed and her shoulders hunched, refusing to meet Edelgard’s eyes. “That’s what he wanted from me. That’s _all_ he wanted from me. A good wife for a rich man and nothing else. He wanted me to be quiet, polite, refined, demure… but I wasn’t good at any of those things.”

“I see,” Edelgard said. Such things were sadly common in noble families—especially when Crests were involved. Still, this wasn’t quite the suffering she’d been expecting Bernadetta to tell her about. Not that she was expecting to hear obscene tales of gruesome human experimentation, but there _had_ to be something more.

“I tried, I really _tried._ He went to such extremes to teach me. Every dinner was like an exam I couldn’t pass. Every time he had guests over, he’d scrutinize my every move, and he’d spend the night telling me everything I did wrong.” Bernadetta worriedly kneaded her paws, her voice cracking. “He’d even tie me to a chair from dawn to dusk to teach me to be quiet and not fidget. It never worked. Nothing he did ever worked. He’d scold me until his voice went hoarse, but—”

Shocked, Edelgard squeezed her shoulder. “He would tie you to a chair?” Why anyone would have to _teach_ Bernadetta how to be quiet was beyond her—she spoke silence as fluently as Petra spoke her own native tongue.

No. She had been taught that _too_ well.

“And if he caught me drawing or painting or sewing, he’d spend the day lecturing me about how much time I was wasting when I could’ve been following his lessons,” Bernadetta added, the words spilling from her mouth like a waterfall, “and if I left a story I was writing out where he could find it, he would read it aloud to our attendants and force me to listen to them laugh…” She shuddered and fell into Edelgard’s arms, choking back a horrid sob.

 _“He would_ tie _you to a_ chair?”

“And if—if I made any friends he didn’t approve of, they’d—I-I met a boy once, a c-commoner, and when my father found out, he—he was—I-if I hadn’t met him, he’d still be…”

_“What?”_

Bernadetta just shook her head, weeping as she clung tighter to Edelgard’s shoulder. Edelgard felt the still-aching bone throb anew under the pressure, but gritted her teeth and bore the pain.

“So I locked myself in my room—and never came out—a-and eventually, he gave up on me…” She sniffled. “That’s what I am. Useless. Worthless. Hopeless. A lost cause. And i-it’s all my fault… _I couldn’t be the daughter he wanted…”_

The tears dampening Edelgard’s shoulders couldn’t put out the fire boiling her blood. She had to fight the urge to clench her fists in anger lest her claws rake across Bernadetta’s back. If the Count of Varley were here before her right now, she would strike him down in a fit of pique. Like so many other noble patriarchs who made stud bulls of their sons and cows of their daughters, he had bred her to be no more than mere chattel. And chattel need not aspire, need not dream, need not strive—what an insult to the human spirit!

This was a grotesque symptom of this twisted world’s original sin—the sin the Immaculate One had wrought upon the world one thousand years ago when she had slain the King of Liberation and established the Church of Seiros, binding humanity to a wheel of a cruel hegemony.

She took a deep breath to calm herself. She had to get a better handle on her emotions. Five feet of human pain, rage, and anguish stuffed into three inches of mouse—no wonder it was all leaking out in such unbecoming ways. She couldn’t allow herself to have an outburst in front of Bernadetta—she’d frighten her again. She had to soothe her. She had to…

 _“Please don’t be angry,”_ Bernadetta whimpered into her shoulder. _“I-I know it was my fault, all of it, but please don’t be angry at me…”_

Her heart skipped a beat. Her stomach churned just thinking about it. As much as she’d gotten used to Bernadetta being a mouse, as far as she’d come since she’d been too afraid to so much as _touch_ her, that was still a line she feared to cross.

She would force herself to step across that line; she would throw herself across it if she had to.

She was going to pet Bernadetta.

“Your father never wanted a daughter in the first place,” she said, “he wanted a _pet._ It is not your fault you were born a human.” Bernadetta had not always been a mouse at heart, as she’d said before. Years ago, long before a twist of fate had made it painfully literal, her father had transformed her into one in spirit. What could she have been, if not for that? What could she have been, if not for her beast of a father?

She choked down her rage and revulsion and forced herself to gently slip her fingers through Bernadetta’s shaggy mop of hair, stroking her claws through her fur like the teeth of a comb, trying as best she could to soothe her in spite of her own turmoil of emotions struggling to fight its way out of her. To her surprise, it didn’t feel so awful to embrace her, now that she’d done it; it was rather like petting a very large cat.

That was the trick with fear, wasn’t it? The mere _idea_ was always more frightening.

Bernadetta sniffled, her voice muffled as she buried her snout in Edelgard’s cloak. _“No… I failed him…”_

“He failed _you,_ Bernadetta. He stole your childhood away from you,” Edelgard insisted to her. “He was your own family, charged with protecting you and nurturing you, yet he turned your childhood into a nightmare—reduced you to a scared little girl huddled in your room, _shackled to the wall of a dungeon, surrounded by the fetid stench of the dead and the dying lying in their own sick and filth while the rats—”_

The words had spilled out of Edelgard’s mouth before she could stop herself—as though they had their own wills counter to hers, the same way that infuriating tail of hers seemed to have its own will. She fell to her knees, dragging Bernadetta down with her, suddenly dumbstruck, her pulse fluttering; every breath was like trying to swallow a stone.

Bernadetta pulled away from her. “Uh… h-heh… I-I mean,” she stammered, laughing nervously, “y-you don’t have to exaggerate it like that…”

Edelgard’s breath came out in shallow, ragged gasps, her lungs burning as they yearned for the air she couldn’t give them. She felt faint again, her head as light as her heart was heavy; the world was spinning around her. How could she have let that slip out? She thought she had regained control of herself, that she had reclaimed her strength and composure; why _now_ of all times was it slipping through her fingers again?

She should never have opened herself up to begin with—she’d opened a door that couldn’t be closed.

 _“Edelgard?”_ Bernadetta’s paws fell on her shoulders. “Lady Edelgard, what’s wrong? I—Please, don’t be upset for _me._ I know it—it sounds bad, h-how I said it all, but I don’t deserve—If I’d just tried harder—”

Edelgard made a fist and slammed it against the floor, gritting her teeth against the sharp jolt of pain running through her knuckles. “I’m fine,” she said. “I…” She took as deep a breath as she could, forcing down the lump in her throat, and clutched her cloak for the small comfort it offered. “I am proud of you. It must take great resilience to cling to your passions despite what he did to you.”

“You’re— _what?”_

“Proud.” Edelgard took her paw. “I understand your resilience. And I admire it.”

 _“Lady Edelgard…”_ Bernadetta sobbed, wrapping her arms around her.

The most powerful weapon any leader had was rhetoric and oration; Edelgard prided herself on knowing just what to say to win people over to her way of thinking. Bernadetta’s lasting trauma and the nagging, paternal voice in her head was perhaps the strongest foe she had faced with these armaments, but she had made a breakthrough at last.

“I’m sorry for what he did to you, Bernadetta. Your father was evil.”

Bernadetta clung to her, weeping the last of her tears into her shoulder. “He—He wasn’t an _evil_ person…” she sniffled.

“A tyrant is a tyrant,” Edelgard said, “whether of a nation or a household. And evil is evil, no matter how small. If I had my way—no, _when_ I lead the Empire, no child will ever be treated the way you were. I promise.”

At that, Bernadetta offered her a hopeful little smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes.

“But that future will not come to pass if we languish down here,” Edelgard said. “It’s time we take our leave of this place.”

Bernadetta nodded, choking down the last of her tears. “Yeah.” Her voice was still strained. “We should go home.”

They headed for Matthias’ tent, where his freshly-polished sword lay on a ramshackle wooden table next to the equally well-crafted axe and bow he’d bequeathed to them last night.

“I-Is it right to take these?” Bernadetta asked, her voice still a hoarse and feeble croak, as Edelgard grabbed the axe. “They hardly have any real weapons apart from these…”

“I won’t look a gift horse in the mouth,” Edelgard retorted. “They offered us these weapons. It’s only fair that we do with them as we please. Besides, the needs of the Empire—of all of Fódlan—far outweigh these rodents’ provincial concerns—”

_“Edelgard!”_

Edelgard’s ears perked up as Matthias’ voice rang through the air. She whirled around, hastily setting the axe back on the table as the mouse and his battle-scarred brother rushed into the tent, the slit in its canvas wall twisting in his wake. “Matthias, Bernadetta and I were just—”

Whatever he might have thought was going on, Matthias didn’t seem to notice or care. “Oh, you already went to get your weapons! That’s really proactive of you! Did you have some kind of premonition?”

“What’s going on?” Bernadetta asked, snatching up her bow and a quiver of arrows from the table.

 _“Hello, beasts and vermin!”_ a voice rang out from outside the tent.

Edelgard recognized that voice, too.

* * *

Ferdinand watched Hubert pore over the ledger taken from von Barlowe’s study. The two of them, and the rest of the Black Eagles, had taken a table in the local tavern to discuss their findings and plan their next move, commandeering a spot in the corner far from doors, windows, or prying eyes. Just in case he was plotting something dastardly, Hubert was being forced to sit with his back to the wall, with Ferdinand flanking him on his right and Dorothea and Petra on his left. Caspar and Linhardt were perched on Ferdinand’s shoulder, which he would normally find unfathomably uncomfortable, but since they were currently mice, it was only fathomably uncomfortable.

It would have been much _less_ uncomfortable, though, if Caspar wasn’t currently nibbling on a chunk of bread crust _very_ loudly, _very_ voraciously, and right in his ear.

“Caspar, slow down,” Linhardt squeaked. “You’ve been turned into a _mouse,_ not a _goat.”_

“I’m _hungry,”_ came Caspar’s muffled retort.

In spite of his annoyance with them, Ferdinand had to pity them. Yes, Caspar was an obnoxious loudmouth, impulsive to a fault, and with the ill manners of a street urchin in spite of his breeding; yes, Linhardt was an amoral hedonist who cared more about his own gratification than for the needs and considerations of his peers—but neither of them _deserved_ to be turned into rodents.

“Have you ever seen something so _cute,”_ Dorothea said, “that you go right past wanting to hug and cuddle it and just want to, oh, I don’t know… squeeze it to death… or punch it?”

Petra nodded. “Yes, right now I am knowing that feeling greatly,” she said, punching her in the arm. Dorothea’s face reddened.

Hubert’s eye roved from line to line in the little black ledger book as he did his best to ignore the lovebirds to his left to his right. “Monica von Ochs… I should have known.”

“I knew it!” Caspar crowed. “See, Ferdinand? I _told_ you she was fishy!”

“Yes,” Ferdinand sighed, wincing. Having a mouse _shout_ in one’s ear was hardly pleasant. “Yes, you did.”

“Wow. You knew something even Hubert didn’t know,” Linhardt said.

“Hey… that’s right!” Caspar let out a shrill, triumphant whoop. “I knew something Hubert didn’t!”

“Congratulations,” Hubert said, not looking up from the ledger. “Would you like me to reward you with a morsel of cheese?”

“Don’t patronize me,” Caspar shot back. “But yes, as long as you’re offering.”

“There’s something puzzling about these ledger entries.” Hubert tapped a pale finger on the paper. “I cannot quite put my finger on it without seeing my list of ingredients, but something does not sit right with me.”

“I told you we should’ve brought Hubert’s journal with us, too,” Caspar told Linhardt.

“As if I could carry that thing.”

“Well, I kept telling you to work on your upper body strength! It’s not my fault you’re a slacker!”

“It is not a bad thing if von Barlowe has your journal, is it?” Petra asked Hubert. “You are not keeping secret messages in it?”

“In the journal I let those two get their grubby paws on?” Hubert asked, smirking as he gestured lazily to the mice bickering on Ferdinand’s shoulder. “Most certainly not. I keep my secret messages in a different journal. _This_ one merely has the Professor’s lecture notes.”

Petra sighed. “That is relieving.”

“Von Barlowe may still trust me,” Hubert said, “due to our, er… common employer. I will have to go to him to retrieve the journal.”

“Not alone, you’re not,” Dorothea said sternly.

“No, not alone—of course not. I would be a fool not to have backup on hand.” Hubert closed the ledger and slipped it under his cloak. “However, Dorothea, von Barlowe has seen your face. I wouldn’t risk bringing you along. I suggest we split into groups of two. Ferdinand and I will approach him from the front of the shop—Dorothea, Petra, you will wait in the back in case he tries to flee.”

Dorothea wore a skeptical frown. “Well… as long as you’re being supervised. Good luck, Ferdie.”

They left the tavern and headed downtown to the apothecary, parting ways as they reached the gloomy, dilapidated house. As he and Hubert approached the front door, Ferdinand felt tiny claws prick his skin as Caspar hid under his collar.

“Do not be frightened,” Ferdinand consoled him, gently patting his head with a finger. “Hubert and I are prepared. I even have a _real_ knife this time.”

“What? Frightened? I’m not _frightened,”_ Caspar retorted. “I’m just… kinda worried that you might need me in a fight, and I’m, well… short. Er.”

Linhardt poked his head out from under the lapel of Ferdinand’s jacket. “You could crawl up von Barlowe’s trousers and bite him in his unmentionables again.”

“Er… _again?”_ Ferdinand asked, suddenly feeling very aware of how vulnerable his own unmentionables were.

“And I could throw very tiny fireballs at him if you need me to,” Linhardt added. “I hope it won’t come to that, but…”

“Both of you, cease your incessant squeaking and hide yourselves,” Hubert said, resting his hand on the doorknob. “Von Barlowe will suspect something if one of us is covered in vermin.”

Ferdinand tried very hard to ignore the singularly unpleasant sensation of mice scurrying across his undershirt and inserting themselves into his pockets. “Hubert,” he said, “before we enter this den of sin, I must ask—why do you keep such unpleasant company? These people you call ‘those who slither in the dark’ all seem as nefarious as they come.”

“They offer something Lady Edelgard and I need,” Hubert said. “And we intend to wring them dry until they have nothing left to offer us. Then we will dispose of them.”

“Hmm. It seems they have the same idea regarding yourself and Lady Edelgard.” Ferdinand shook his head. That was no way to live, trapped in a never-ending cycle of double-crossing and triple-crossing. How could one trust _anybody?_ What future could Hubert and Edelgard have together other than the both of them ending up with knives at each other’s throats?

The door creaked open. A bell chimed as Hubert stepped over the threshold and Ferdinand followed.

The apothecary’s shop was dark, dim, and gloomy, with shadows and cobwebs blanketing every corner. Shelves caked with dust made homes for grimy bottles and creeping spiders. Candles cast only faint lights. It was a room wreathed in perpetual night, the perfect abode for a man who slithered in the dark.

Albus von Barlowe stood at the counter, polishing an empty glass bottle with a rag. He looked up, his glasses flashing as they caught and reflected the light from worn-down candles. He seemed to be just a normal old man—hardy a threat, let alone an evil mastermind.

“Hello, travelers,” von Barlowe said, his voice a soft croak. There was a noticeable glint in his eyes and a twitch at the corner of his mouth as his gaze settled on Hubert. “What can I do for you?”

Hubert gently nudged Ferdinand in the side. Taken aback, Ferdinand stumbled forward. “Er… um, I… I am going into battle,” he said, not quite sure which part of his brain was concocting this cover story, “and I need to buy one of your strongest potions.”

“Oh?” The old apothecary raised an eyebrow. “My strongest potions would be too strong for you, traveler. Perhaps I can interest you in one of my weaker potions.”

“It is going to be _quite_ a battle,” Hubert interjected with a sly grin on his face. “I think my friend… Arthur von… _Varley_ is quite capable of handling your strongest potions, von Barlowe. If you wouldn’t mind…”

“Ah, I see. Yes.” von Barlowe set the bottle and rag aside and departed into the back room, the door creaking shut behind him with a pained, oil-starved squeal.

 _“Varley?”_ Ferdinand hissed, bristling.

“It is only an alias. Did you think I would give him your _real_ name?” Hubert replied.

Ferdinand crossed his arms. Once again, Hubert was taunting him, reminding him that he had played no minor role in what had happened to Bernadetta and, by extension, what had happened to Edelgard. It was also—though it had to have been unintentional, as Hubert could not have possibly known—a jab at the arranged marriage to Bernadetta which Ferdinand had begged his parents to reconsider out of fear for the girl’s spooky reputation.

“You are an awful person, Hubert,” he said. “I find I quite despise you.”

“One does one’s best.”

“What you still have yet to explain,” he added, sparing a venomous glance at Hubert, “is why you simply did not spill Edelgard’s cider or smash the cup as soon as you suspected it of being poisoned. Were you that keen on getting rid of me?”

“Yeah! For a good guy you sure seem to want us dead!” Caspar chimed in. “You’re the one who led Lin and me into this deathtrap to begin with!”

Hubert stuck a finger gingerly into his ear and grimaced, as though Caspar’s squeaking had damaged his hearing. “I apologize for assuming you and Linhardt possessed some bare minimum of competency; rest assured, I won’t make that mistake again. As for your assertion, Ferdinand, I switched the cups because I feared causing a scene would alert the assassin. Of course, after reading your latest handbill, I _did_ look forward to the possibility that I would not have to read another, and that may have colored my actions.”

“Handbill?”

“You know. The one that read thus…” Hubert coughed into his fist and cleared his throat. “‘Let it be known today, on the eve of the Horsebow Moon, that I, Ferdinand von Aegir, have this past month bested Princess Edelgard von Hresvelg in the following domains: Flower arrangement, dressage, the preparation of the finest teas, archery…’ Need I go on?”

“You snuck into my room to read that! I had no intention of distributing that; I wrote it for my own edification, to keep a record of my progress as I work to surpass Lady Edelgard!”

“A fool’s quest. Even if she _has_ been transformed into a mouse, her spirit and talent still towers over yours. You are no equal to her majesty, and never shall you be her equal.”

“You ought to have switched Lady Edelgard’s cup with your own,” Ferdinand spat. “A rodent suits you more than her, or poor Bernadetta, or Caspar and Linhardt.”

“Please leave me out of this,” Linhardt said, his voice muffled as he rested in the pocket of Ferdinand’s jacket.

“Lady Edelgard _needs_ me,” Hubert said. “But you, Ferdinand, are nothing to her. Know your place.”

“My place is here in the world of humans, standing on two feet and wearing fine clothes,” Ferdinand grumbled, possessed by a white-hot burst of anger, “while Edelgard, wherever she may be, scurries about on all fours, subsisting on nuts and seeds and stale crumbs of bread.”

Hubert clenched his fists so tightly that the veins stood out on his pale skin, grotesquely livid. His mouth drew itself into a furious scowl. “Are you begging me to kill you, you wretched worm? I could reduce you to blackened bones here and now if I so choose—”

The door swung open, letting out a hideous moan of anguish as Albus von Barlowe stepped through it with a small glass bottle in his hand—a bottle Ferdinand instantly recognized as a vessel carried by Imperial soldiers to hold strength-boosting potions. He and Hubert immediately shut themselves up and tried not to look quite so angry. Caspar quickly slipped back into Ferdinand’s pocket, hiding himself from view.

“Here you are, master von Varley,” von Barlowe said, handing him the bottle. “This is a single dose of a fast-acting agility-boosting tonic. This will make you as swift on foot as the fastest horse.”

Ferdinand took it and studied the potion. Four drops of odorless, colorless, tasteless poison suspended in a single small mouthful of water, he suspected—the _polymorphus muridae_ that had caused such strife these past few days. “It looks like mere water,” he said.

“Why don’t you take the potion right now,” Hubert asked, “and see if it works?”

“Such is the mark of a true master,” von Barlowe said with a proud smile twisting his bristly salt-and-pepper beard.

“Actually, I just remembered,” Hubert added, “sir von Barlowe, I, too, would like your strongest agility-boosting tonic.”

“Ah, yes, very good. I will go back and get it.” von Barlowe vanished into the back room yet again.

“Don’t drink that, by the way,” Hubert said to Ferdinand once the coast was clear.

“Obviously not,” Ferdinand said, relieved, as he slipped the bottle into his pocket—

 _“Hey! I’m trying to sleep in here!”_ Linhardt protested.

“Ah. Sorry.” Ferdinand tried his other pocket—

 _“Ow!”_ Caspar squeaked.

With a roll of his eyes, Hubert swiped the bottle from Ferdinand’s hand and slipped it into his cloak, then crept over to the side of the door, flattening himself against the wall. He looked like a living shadow, his cloak and black hair melding with the darkness and gloom until all that was left was his pale, vampiric face and sallow eye.

“Hubert? What are you doing?” Ferdinand asked.

Hubert held a finger to his lips, then produced a length of wire from within his cloak, pulling it taut between his hands. Ferdinand tried not to stare at him.

After a heart-pounding eternity of silence and apprehension had fallen over the room, the door squeaked open again with another ungodly squeal, and as soon as von Barlowe stepped over the threshold, Hubert brought his arms over his shoulders and wrapped the wire around his neck.

Von Barlowe gagged and choked, eyes bulging, as the wire dug into the wrinkled wattles of his neck, blood trickling in channels down the hollow of his throat and planting crimson blossoms in the collar of his shirt. He flailed his arms and kicked his legs, gurgling and rasping as his face turned livid, his glasses flying across the room from an errant swing of his hand as he drove his elbow into Hubert’s stomach.

 _“Help me, Ferdinand, you brain-dead dolt!”_ Hubert hissed as von Barlowe loosed a blast of dark miasma into his stomach and threw him off. His clothes scorched and the flesh beneath seared, Hubert stumbled into one of the shelves, rattling it and knocking over a rainbow of potions, tinctures, and tonics which all shattered on the floor with a cacophonous din.

Freed from Hubert’s grasp, von Barlowe clutched at his bleeding throat, blood seeping through his fingers as the bluish tint faded from his cheeks and lips. Just as fresh black flames licked his free hand, Ferdinand leaped over the counter and drove his fist square into his face. The apothecary stepped back, swaying on his feet, his eyes rolling up into the back of his head as a river of blood gushed from a nose that now resembled a crushed strawberry and stained his wiry, bristly beard. He hit the floor with a loud _thunk,_ unconscious.

Hubert clutched at his stomach and spat a wad of spit and blood out of his mouth, his pale fingers digging into the charred and ragged remains of his jacket and undershirt as Ferdinand rushed over to him and helped him up. Broken glass crunched under his boots.

“You ought to have informed me of your plan,” Ferdinand scolded him as he laid him down on the floor and tried to inspect the wound. “I would have been much more well-suited to strangling him than _you_ and those limp noodles you call arms.”

“Cease the lectures, _Professor_ Ferdinand,” Hubert grumbled, blood dripping down his chin. His voice came out as a strained and quiet hiss.

Ferdinand felt a flash of panic run through his mind. Hubert wasn’t _mortally_ wounded, was he? “Caspar, wake up Linhardt and head around back. Get Dorothea and Petra and bring them in here.”

“I’m awake, I’m awake,” Linhardt grumbled. “No need to shout.”

“I’m not shouting!” Ferdinand shouted. “Lin, heal Hubert.” He felt the distinctly uncomfortable sensation of two mice climbing down his trousers and hoped to the Goddess he would never be stuck chaperoning any number of talking mice again.

“It’s a mere flesh wound,” Hubert spat through gritted teeth as Linhardt held his paws over the wound and cast a healing spell. His pale hand, now red, was doing a poor job of hiding flesh that had taken on the color and texture of overcooked steak. “It merely looks bad because he hit me at point-blank range. Now find some rope and tie von Barlowe down before he wakes up.”

* * *

Claude’s investigation was going nowhere fast. Garreg Mach was simply too big for one man to search by himself, especially when that one man was searching for one specific mouse among the hundreds that must have lived in this monastery. And Hubert, his one lead (not to mention primary suspect) was nowhere to be found. Darkly, he began to wonder if the whole mouse poison thing had just been a red herring—something to keep him occupied while the culprit spirited Edelgard away.

Lysithea yawned, rubbed her eyes, and sleepily ran a hand through her long, wispy white hair as she flipped through a thick, dust-caked spellbook that had been loaned to her by Tomas, the monastery’s librarian. She sifted through the book’s dizzying array of content the way a shark swam through water, but then again, she _was_ a prodigy among prodigies. Top of her class, especially when it came to magic, and that was despite being the youngest student in the academy at a tender fifteen.

“It says here,” she said, “that those affected by polymorphic materials retain their sense of self and some physical characteristics of their human form. That’s what you’ve been doing wrong, Claude. You need to look for a mouse that _acts_ like Edelgard, not just _looks_ like her.” Lysithea had a bad habit of talking down to people outside her area of expertise, due both to the incredible breadth and depth of her knowledge and her desire to seem more grown-up. Anything she could do to make herself feel like the adult in the room, she did.

“That’ll make the search easier.” Claude stroked his chin. “If Edelgard is still self-aware, though, then _she_ should be trying to find us just as hard as _we’re_ trying to find her. Unless she’s been injured… or killed…”

“What _I_ want to know is who could’ve made that poison,” Lysithea wondered as she snapped the book shut. “Polymorph spells are _advanced_ dark magic. You would have to study at a specialized academy for five to ten years to master them. They’re not something you’d pick up here… or most anywhere else. I’m sure less than a dozen people in Fódlan know them.”

“You sound like you’ve put some thought into this,” Claude said, slipping the dusty tome in with the dozen other books piled on his bed, making sure to cover it with other, more innocuous books. Tomas the librarian, who made a hobby out of holding onto material deemed inappropriate by the Church of Seiros, would have been disappointed if somebody like Seteth were to find the book and have it burned. “Planning on studying them after you graduate? I bet you could master them in two or three years.”

Lysithea bristled as though she knew Claude was patronizing her, but nevertheless her cheeks flushed red, lighting up her pale face. “Well, I _do_ like a challenge…”

There was a loud knock on the door. After giving the room a hasty once-over to make sure anything incriminating had been hidden, Claude opened it just enough to glimpse who was on the other side. He couldn’t help but feel a little paranoid—but then again, if a warlock with a vial full of polymorph potion was after him, they’d hardly ruin their tactical advantage by knocking politely.

It was Seteth, fortunately. Usually, there wasn’t anything fortunate about running into Seteth, but in this case, it was better than running into the culprit.

He pulled the door open the rest of the way. “Oh, hey. What brings you here?”

“Hello, Claude. Professor Manuela tells me you’re quite adept with poisons.”

Claude felt a chill run down his spine. “Well,” he said, flashing a roguish grin and winking, “I don’t mean to brag…”

Seteth pulled out a small glass bottle. “Does this look familiar to you?” he asked, his eyes narrowing.

Claude tried to keep a blank face. “That? Isn’t that a potion bottle for imperial soldiers? Chemical poisons I know backwards and forwards… but sorry, but I’m not too knowledgeable on magic stuff.” He glanced back over his shoulder at Lysithea. “Maybe Lysie could help you figure out what was in that.”

Seteth shook his head. “I’m aware of your classmate’s prodigious skills, but there’s no need for that. Professor Hanneman has already determined conclusively what this bottle contained.”

“Oh?”

“I’ll spare you the details. Suffice to say, somebody is using this potion to kidnap students in a very particular way. I suggest you be on your guard and be very careful about whom you accept food and drink from.” Seteth pocketed the bottle.

Claude’s eyes narrowed. _Polymorphus muridae,_ he suspected. It must have been found in that quiet girl’s quarters with Edelgard’s clothes. “You don’t have to worry about me,” he said to Seteth. “I’ve had people trying to poison me my whole life.” He swiped a little metal flask from his hip. “That’s why I’ve got this.”

Though Seteth never smiled, there was an approving gleam in his eyes. “I see. Very good, Claude. Would that everybody were as cautious as you.” He took the door and swung it shut, then slipped his foot in at the last minute to keep it from closing. “Oh, and by the way, have you seen Hubert von Vestra recently?”

“Not since last night.”

“Nor have I.” Behind the narrow slit between the door and the wall, Seteth’s brows furrowed. “Or any of the other Black Eagles. Be vigilant and look after the rest of your classmates.”

He pulled his foot back and the door swung shut.

Claude yawned, still exhausted. He was used to getting more sleep than he had gotten last night. “Well, I’d better go out there and start looking again.”

“For Edelgard? You’re putting in a lot of effort for your rival.”

“I wouldn’t call her a _rival._ And rival or not, it would be a shame if someone as formidable as her ended up in the belly of a cat with the Battle of the Eagle and Lion so close at hand—never mind the chaos it would plunge the Empire into. Care to join me?”

Lysithea rubbed at the dark circles under her pale pinkish eyes. “I don’t think _I’d_ be of much help. But I heard from Raphael a few days ago that Marianne can talk to animals…”

Claude’s spirits lifted. It was like he’d poured a pot of coffee right into his veins. “Really? I _knew_ it! I _knew_ she was hiding something! That’s extraordinary! That’s just what I need! Any idea where she is?”

“Well, her best friend’s a horse, apparently, so… the stables?”

“Perfect.” Claude slung his satchel over his shoulder and fished through it until he found something squishy and slightly sticky. “Oh, by the way, thanks for all your help. Here.”

He tossed Lysithea a slightly-smushed cinnamon roll. She caught it, fumbled with it, and eyed it with an unusual amount of suspicion considering how much of a sweet tooth she had.

“Oh, come on. You know I wouldn’t poison you. That’s just bad leadership.”

After giving the treat another, closer look, Lysithea all but inhaled it.

“Although we’d have a lot more order on the battlefield if I started lacing our classmates’ food with mind-control drugs…”

Her eyes bulged as much as her cheeks. She stood up, a ball of black flame flickering to life in her left hand.

Claude hastily made an exit from the room. _“Kidding! I’m just kidding!”_

He ran out the dormitories and across the monastery and found Marianne exactly where Lysithea had guessed she’d be—in the stables, mumbling softly to a horse that must have been her ‘friend.’ Marianne was a meek, waifish little thing, fragile as a porcelain doll, with pallid gray skin ringing her eyes from lack of sleep and pale skin from a life spent indoors. Her pale blue hair was tied back in a frayed, wispy bun. She was the Golden Deer house’s resident healer, and despite all appearances, she could be quite a holy terror with a sword in her hand, as though some ferocious beast dwelt inside her.

He flagged her down as he crossed the stables. _“Marianne!_ Can I ask something of you?”

Marianne looked up and froze like a deer in front of a hunter. “Oh! Perhaps you’d be better off asking somebody else…”

“No, I think I really need _your_ help today.” Claude rested his hand on the horse’s neck, threading his fingers through its mane. “This is your friend, right?”

“Um, yes…” Marianne ran a comb through its mane. “This is Dorte.”

“Dorte the horse, huh. A good conversation partner, by the looks of it. You’ve said more to him since I got here than you do to everyone else in a day.”

Marianne let a nervous smile purse her lips. “I suppose he is, yes.”

“And you can understand him?”

“Yes. We do understand each other.”

“Great! That’s great to hear, Marianne. That’s just what I was hoping you’d say. I need your help.”

“I—I’m sure someone else would be of more use to you,” Marianne replied. “I-If you need someone who can ride or use a lance, there’s Lorenz or Leonie, or if you want someone who can cast white or dark magic, there’s Lysithea…”

“No, it’s something only _you_ can help me with. You might’ve seen me out and about with Hubert yesterday, looking for mice…”

“Oh, is _that_ what you were looking for?”

“Yeah. You see… Someone’s out there with a magic poison that turns people into mice and now we have to find Edelgard—who’s a mouse—before it’s too late. And possibly some other people, too.”

Marianne stared at him, dumbfounded. Her mouth hung agape, her pale brow furrowed. “Um… _what?”_

Claude nodded. “Yeah. But you can talk to animals! Instead of catching mice and hoping one of them is her, we can just catch them and pump them for information!”

“O-Oh. No, I’m sorry, there’s been a terrible misunderstanding.” Marianne patted Dorte’s snout. The horse promptly licked her palm. “You see, I can’t _actually—”_

“Please, Marianne. The academy’s in turmoil. Most of the Black Eagles are missing. Even Seteth’s upset.”

“He’s always upset.”

“But not like this!” He took her by the hand. “It’s up to us to find the culprit and set things right. I know you’re not very confident in your abilities, but at least give it a shot!”

Marianne shook her head. “I’ll just slow you down.”

“But you might not, and I’m willing to take that chance. Come on. What does Dorte have to say about all this? I bet _he_ thinks you can do it!”

Marianne looked the horse in its soulless, vacant eyes. The horse whinnied and nudged Claude’s satchel with its nose, then licked his hand. Its tongue and the puffs of breath from its cavernous nostrils were hot and wet.

“He says he’s hungry and there’s something tasty in your bag,” she said.

“See? You _can_ understand animals! Come with me! We’re going mouse-hunting!” Claude insisted, tugging her along. “See you later, Dorte! Give my regards to the other horses!”

“No, I—” Marianne sighed, resigned to her fate as Claude’s assistant mouser for the day. “Okay…”

* * *

Edelgard poked her head out of the tent, her grip on her axe tightening, and caught sight of two wooden wagons rolling their way into the camp, both drawn by a pair of rats that had been trussed and bridled like horses. Atop the lead wagon sat three mice—two clad in black robes and beaked facemasks, like the mages from last night, and a third wearing a gray cloak and a tall, peaked hat with the wide brim pulled down over his eyes. Both wagons had a trio of mice armed with crude and misshapen scrap-metal swords waiting in back.

 _“A little birdie told me you felled one of our raider troops last night,”_ the one in the peaked hat spoke to the camp’s haggard inhabitants. Mice with ramshackle wooden polearms surrounded the wagons, but rather than make any attempt at pushing it back, they all slowly backed away from it as the rats pulling it along trotted into the camp, as though repulsed by an invisible force field. _“That, I’m afraid, will cost you extra!”_

Edelgard was dumbstruck. She _recognized_ that mouse.

It was Myson, one of the highest-ranking warlocks in the imperial mage corps and an agent of those who slither in the dark. What was he doing under Garreg Mach? And why was he a _mouse?_

 _“That’s_ what’s going on,” Matthias said.

 _“Myson…”_ Edelgard whispered, still shocked to see him down here.

“Huh? Apple fell pretty far from the tree,” Zeke said.

Myson motioned to the armed mice sitting in the backs of the wagons and snapped his fingers. _“A dozen ought to be enough for the experiments,”_ he told them. _“Get to it; I don’t want the stench of this place to settle into my clothes.”_

The rats reared up and squealed as the soldier mice leaped off their wagons and into the crowd amassed at their sides like rocks through a window; between the hulking behemoths and the armed soldiers, the ragtag mice broke ranks just as easily as glass. Several brave mice, though, charged at the wagon in defiance of their more skittish peers; Myson raised his paw and with a lazy flick of his wrist and a flurry of black flames, a charred corpse fell to the floor and the brave mice, now minus one, promptly changed their minds and beat a hasty retreat.

The half-dozen soldiers waded through the crowd and returned to their respective wagon with tiny, squealing mouse pups cradled in their arms, hauling them to the backs of the wagons. Whoever the pups belonged to didn’t put up a fight, nor did any of the mice standing by to defend the camp move even a muscle to protect them. Fear rolled off them in waves. Edelgard felt a chilly haze sweep through her mind, clouding her thoughts as voices rang in her head.

She could almost feel the cold shackles rubbing against her ankles, scraping away sores and blisters; the burlap tunic scratching against her fair, delicate skin; the moans of the dying, the wailing of the mad, the shining steel knives and tools she couldn’t even describe cutting her open and burrowing through her flesh…

Never again.

She felt something push into the small of her back, snapping her out of her fugue state as she stumbled out of the tent. Matthias came up behind her. _“I’ve got your back,”_ he whispered. _“Maybe at a bit of a distance, but I’ve got it. What do we do?”_

The loaded wagons began to slowly turn in a wide circle as the soldiers climbed back on.

Edelgard steeled herself. “Bernadetta, ready your bow. Don’t wait for my signal; fire on the mages as soon as you have a clear line of sight. Zeke, Matthias, fan out and attack the wagons from the left and right. While they’re distracted, I’ll lead the frontal assault.”

“You’ll _what?”_ Matthias gasped.

Zeke winced. “Uh, Rustbelt… did you just say ‘frontal assault?’”

“Yes.”

“You saw what happened to the last guy who charged at ‘em, right?”

“I am your prophesied savior, am I not?” Edelgard snapped at him. “Or was that just a _fairy tale_ you told those children?”

“Uh… doesn’t mean yer immortal or anythin’…”

She glanced back at Bernadetta, who’d already nocked an arrow to her bow. “Bernadetta, do you trust me?”

“Um… I—yes, o-of course, just…”

“Are we mice? Or are we Black Eagles?”

“Um…” Bernadetta looked down at herself. “Y-Yes?”

Edelgard nodded. “Precisely. Matthias, do you trust me?”

“Yeah, I’ve got your back! Just… maybe if you had a, um, better plan?”

“My plan is fine. And you, Ezekiel?”

“Nah.”

Matthias glared at his brother.

“Okay, fine.”

“On my mark. The crowds will act as camouflage and hide our numbers.” Edelgard held the haft of her axe with both paws, feeling the comforting texture of polished wood and weight of the axe’s razor-sharp head, tightening her grip as the wagons circled around the clearing in the center of the camp—Myson’s in front, the extra in the back—and presented their backs.

_“Now!”_

Her cohorts split off from her. She surged forward, pushing through the frozen crowd in her path as Matthias and Zeke slipped through the caravan’s left and right flanks. With Myson in the front, he was ill-prepared to respond quickly to an attack, even with dark magic at his disposal.

As she broke through the crowd, an arrow flew over her head and struck one of the mages in the shoulder. One of the two harnessed rats, freed of its magical thrall, bucked and writhed as the injured mage struggled to reassert his control. The three mice hanging off the back of the wagon perked up, realizing they were under attack, and drew their swords—crude, ugly things, mere scrap metal tied to short lengths of wood.

Zeke attacked from the left, his crude dagger flashing, as Matthias attacked from the right with a swing of his elegant sword; as their blades met those of two of the three mice, the third one leaped from the wagon and bolted, rushing to catch up with Myson. The uninjured mage sitting at the front of the wagon whirled around, aiming a blast of black fire at Edelgard. She ducked, feeling the rippling, cold miasma frost her hair as it sailed overhead, and leaped onto the wagon.

With a single stroke of her axe Edelgard cleaved a canyon in one of the sword-wielding mice from stem to stern, squinting against the fountain spray of blood. Sensing imminent defeat, the other enemy mouse threw himself off the wagon, hoping to avoid Matthias’ blade and Edelgard’s axe, and ran after his cowardly cohort who’d jumped ship first.

Myson’s wagon picked up speed as the runaway swordsmouse leaped onto the back with his cohorts. Another arrow zipped through the air, striking one of the besieged wagon’s two rats between its shoulderblades, and another whistled overhead and stuck in the back of Myson’s wagon. The wagon rocked and rattled in response to the rat’s pained writhing and the mage’s struggles to bring it to heel. Another blast of dark magic cut through the air in response; Edelgard heard Bernadetta’s shocked and frightened yelp ring in her ears, but thankfully, no anguished outcry or scream of pain followed it.

Edelgard dodged a blast of black fire and jabbed the butt of her axe into the mage’s stomach with such force that he flew off the side of the wagon and hit the floor in a crumpled heap. The other mage conjured an orb of miasma, loosing it just as an arrow struck him in the stomach—

The next thing she knew, the world was spinning around her and icy black flames so cold they burned were licking at her cloak. There was a whirlwind of movement for a split second stretched into eternity until she felt her backbone crack against the floor and the writhing, barely-restrained rats tied to the wagon bearing down on her—hot breath, skittering claws, rank odor, slithering tails and bristling fur—

She felt claws bite through her flesh as the rats trampled her, their tails slithering over her body like snakes—she held out her axe in a futile attempt to ward them off, choking down a scream—her heart fluttered like the pulse of a hummingbird, her blood singing in her ears—

When she came to, she was lying on the floor, panting for breath, with one paw pressed to her chest to quell her racing heartbeat and the other clutching her axe so tightly she thought the haft would snap in two. Like last night, she was shivering uncontrollably, icicles running through her veins. She came to her senses, glaring at Myson’s wagon as it peeled off into the hallway and fell out of sight. If looks could kill, he would already be dead, but alas…

 _“Lady Edelgard!”_ Bernadetta helped her to her feet, frantic with worry. Other than a smoking, singed patch of her ragged cloak, she seemed unharmed. “A-Are you okay? I meant to hit that mage in the chest before he attacked you! I’m so sor—uh, I-I mean, th-that was, um, u-unfortunate…”

Edelgard pressed a finger to her little pink nose, silencing her. “I’m fine.” She surveyed the site of the battle. The wagon was empty; both of its drivers lay crumpled on the floor, the rats they’d commanded gnawing at their reins as they struggled to free themselves. “We need to follow the other wagon,” she said to them.

“Sorry, but we can’t, uh, ride rats; we’d never catch up to it,” Matthias mumbled, his hands full with two squirming pups. “Here,” he said, handing them to the nearest bystander.

Edelgard nudged one of the unconscious mages with her paw. “These two can.” She turned to Zeke and Matthias. “You two, gather this camp’s best warriors.”

The siblings shared a bemused glance. “You’re lookin’ at ‘em,” Zeke said.

“But Edelgard,” Bernadetta said, “I thought these ‘parochial affairs’—”

“—Are not so parochial anymore,” Edelgard answered curtly. Those who slither in the dark were directly involved here—and they were stealing _children._ For what purpose? _Experiments._ What kind of experiments had Myson been referring to? The same ones that had taken the lives of her brothers and sisters? To use the blood of the defiled beast as fuel for their flames, that they may burn even the gods?

“Look, they only took ‘bout…” Zeke counted on his fingers. “Six pups. That’s not too bad. We can just make more.”

Edelgard glared at him.

“What? I made almost that many last night.”

 _“Zeke!”_ Matthias squeaked, so embarrassed that his ears reddened.

“Just sayin’, why risk our tails for ‘em?”

“Edelgard’s right. They’re _pups. Our_ pups! We don’t have to let ‘em take them anymore, not with her on our side!”

“Um… m-maybe Zeke’s right,” Bernadetta said. “We—Don’t we want to get back home, Edelgard?”

“This will only be a short detour, and it will allow us to learn more about our enemy,” Edelgard told her. “Ezekiel, you stay here and watch over the camp,” she said to the scarred mouse, scarcely masking her contempt for him. His attitude was inexcusable; when the same thing had happened to _her,_ her father had been beside himself with grief and worry. “Bernadetta, Matthias, you two will come with me.”

Bernadetta nodded and hurried to collect the spent arrows lying around the camp in the detritus of the skirmish; Matthias nodded and went to the wagon; Zeke rolled his eyes and crossed his arms. “Whatever y’say, Rusty,” he grumbled. “Don’t get my little brother killed, y’hear?”

The two mages began to stir, swaying drunkenly as they pulled themselves upright. Edelgard brought the blade of her axe to the throat of the first one and gestured toward the halted wagon as the rats responsible for pulling it tried fruitlessly to gnaw their way out of their harnesses. “You,” she growled. “Ride or die.”

“I’d rather die,” the mage squeaked, “than betray Master Myson—”

It only took a slight twist of Edelgard’s wrist to slide the blade and slit his throat open. The front of the mage’s cloak shimmered with a growing wet stain spreading across the dark fabric as he slumped lifelessly to the floor.

She leveled the bloodstained axe at the one remaining mage. “You. Ride or die.”

The mage nodded so vigorously it was as though his head were about to fall off, his beaked mask bobbing comically. “Ride!” he squeaked.

* * *

“So, what’s this one saying?” Claude asked, holding the sixth mouse of the day up by the scruff of its neck.

Marianne snatched it out of his hand. “Oh, no, you’re holding it wrong. You should put your hand _under it_ and grip it by the base of the tail,” she told him as she softly stroked the mouse’s pale brown fur. “Poor thing. It’s terrified… mice scare very easily.”

“I dunno if we have time to _not_ scare them,” Claude said, frustratedly raking his fingers through his wiry black hair. He’d never expected to find so _many_ mice scurrying around the monastery, not with all the cats around. Then again, the whole faculty was rushing into action to relocate all of the cats, likely to avoid the unpleasant scenario of one of them accidentally eat a transformed student (Professor Manuela had her hands full healing everyone’s scratches and bites, although Cyril wore the angry red scars running up and down his arms like a badge of honor), so now the mice were free to roam the surface without fear of their most dangerous predators.

“Hello, little mouse,” Marianne said softly, still petting it. Her voice was like downy feathers brushing against cotton. “It’s okay. I won’t hurt you. I just, um… need to ask you a question. Are you Edelgard? Or do you know where she is?”

The mouse squeaked.

“Well? What did it say?” Claude asked.

“I, um…” Marianne set the mouse down and let it scurry through the grass. “I don’t think it understood the question.”

“Of course.” Claude tapped his chin thoughtfully and stood up, brushing bits of grass and dirt off his knees. He and Marianne moved on and kept searching.

“Actually…”

“I guess I haven’t been trying to think like a mouse. Now that I think about it, would mice even understand the concept of names?” he wondered.

“Um, Claude… I think I should tell you—”

“We give names to our pets and beasts of burden, but not wild animals. Do they name themselves?” he mused. “Marianne, what questions should we ask these mice instead?”

“That’s the thing. Claude, I can’t actually—”

A flash of movement and a glint of metal caught his eye at the threshold of the Blue Lions’ classroom. “I think I see another one!” he cried out, bounding across the grass and all but leaping up the steps, past the ornate stone columns draped in the azure banner of the Kingdom of Faerghus.

The glint of metal he’d spied was in fact a spring-loaded mousetrap placed strategically on the floor in front of a tiny crevice in the stone wall; the flash of movement had been the iron jaw of the trap snapping shut and catching an unfortunate little brown mouse’s hind leg in its death grip.

Marianne covered her hand with her mouth. “Oh… the poor thing…”

Claude knelt down and picked up the trap, mouse and all. Cats loved to toy with their food, and poison (as he well knew) could be quite ghoulish in its own way, but he’d always thought of traps like these being merciful in their efficiency. Merciful when they snapped the mouse’s neck as intended, he supposed, but _this_ trap had condemned its captive to a slow death by starvation, assuming someone didn’t find it first and drown the poor thing.

As he examined the trap, he noticed that the mouse caught in it had a circlet of leather ringing its torso, complete with what looked like some kind of simple satchel.

A mouse wearing clothes. Strange. And in strange times such as these, only the strangest things could point the way to the truth. This was the best lead he’d found in two days!

Excited as he was intrigued, he pulled a pocketknife from his satchel and carefully pried the trap open, fighting against the vise grip of the tightly-coiled spring until the iron bar pinning down the mouse’s leg lifted up just enough for the injured mouse to slip into his palm. He dropped the trap to the floor, letting it snap shut once again.

The mouse chittered and squeaked in a way that almost sounded gratified. “Heh. I think it’s thanking me,” Claude said with a humbled grin. “I think your talent might be rubbing off on me, Marianne.”

Marianne’s porcelain skin turned pinkish as the faintest hint of a smile tugged on her mouth.

“Hey. I saw that.” Claude handed her the mouse, careful to mind its oddly-bent hind leg, which surely must have hurt terribly. “Anyway, try asking it.”

“Really, Claude, I have to tell you. This whole time, I—”

Claude dumped the mouse into her hand.

“Sorry. Never mind.” Marianne lifted her hand and held up the injured mouse. “You poor thing. I’m sorry you ended up in that trap.” She cupped her other hand over it; a green light shimmered on her palm, seeping through the gaps between her fingers. “There. You should be all better now.”

She pulled her hand away and smiled as the once-injured mouse stretched and wiggled its once-broken hind leg. It gave her another gratified squeak.

Marianne’s eyes widened, her face growing even paler. She nearly dropped the mouse to the floor. “Y-You… _What_ did you say?”

The mouse let out a few more squeaks. “Chatty little guy,” Claude commented.

“O-Oh, I see. My name is Marianne, and the man who saved you is Claude,” Marianne told the mouse.

The mouse squeaked more.

Marianne’s cheeks flushed pink again. “O-Oh, it was nothing. Anyone would have done the same…”

“What’s it saying?” Claude asked.

 _“She_ says her name is Cornflower and she’s eternally grateful to us,” Marianne said. “Um… excuse me, Cornflower? You wouldn’t happen to know where a mouse named Edelgard might be, would you?”

The mouse shook her head and squeaked again.

“Ask it— _her,_ I mean—if she’s seen a white mouse that carries herself with an air of reserved dignity and cold formality,” Claude said.

The mouse kept squeaking. “She says she’s never seen a mouse like that, but then again, she doesn’t know every mouse,” Marianne translated. “If there is a mouse like that, she might be in the tunnels beneath the monastery. That’s where most of them live.”

Claude felt another jolt of adrenaline run through his blood. “Tunnels beneath the monastery? You mean Abyss?” He leaned forward. “I _knew_ it was a real place!” He’d learned quickly after hearing the rumors that most people didn’t even know Abyss existed, or simply didn’t care, and nobody who _did_ believe in it seemed to know how to actually _find_ the place, much to his dismay. A whole underworld comprised of the dregs of society making their own home deep beneath Garreg Mach… as dangerous as it sounded, it excited him, too. He wanted to know everything about it!

“She’d like to lead us there,” Marianne said. “She says she’s glad not all humans are big, lumbering brutes.”

Claude laughed. “Well, I’m happy to prove her wrong about us humans.” He patted Marianne on the shoulder. “See? I told you you’d be a great help. You just have to believe in yourself. Talking to animals, though… I’ll have to enlist your help more often. The tactical upsets we could pull off if we had the very forests themselves on our side just boggles the mind…” His head was already full to bursting with possibilities. Birds swooping down and attacking soldiers, squirrels wreaking havoc on their supplies…

“Well, actually…” Marianne took a deep, fraught breath. “The truth is, Claude… I can’t speak to animals. I’m good at reading their feelings and figuring out what they want from their body language, but…”

Claude looked down at the mouse nestled in Marianne’s palm, who was now affectionately nuzzling her finger. “Well, you sure read _her_ feelings. Name and everything.”

“Well, um… the thing is… I didn’t need to understand her language. She’s speaking ours.”

“Uh…” Claude’s mouse hung agape as he let Marianne’s words run through his brain until they sank in. “Sh—She’s speaking _Fódlanish?”_

Marianne slowly arced her hand over to his side, careful not to disturb its passenger. “You have to listen hard, since she can’t talk very loudly.”

Claude bent down, feeling a little foolish but making up for that with a much stronger feeling of excited curiosity, and closed his eyes, tilting his head to get his ear closer to the mouse.

 _“Ah! Can you hear me now, too, Sir Claude?”_ the mouse asked in a voice so squeaky and high-pitched that her words could just barely be discerned, ringing on the upper edge of his hearing. Her voice was like the ringing in one’s ears when one stood too close to a cannon as it fired.

Claude took a moment to respond. For a second or two, he couldn’t quite remember how to speak. He’d never held a conversation with a mouse, after all. “Loud and clear, Miss Cornflower,” he said after some involuntary deliberation. “And by the way, there’s no need to be so formal; I’m no knight. Just Claude will do.”

_“Thank you, Claude! And thank you so much for releasing me from that trap! I’d been stuck there all night; I’d thought you’d come along to put me out of my misery…”_

“Well, you’re not miserable _now,_ are you?” Claude laughed. “All the same, it was nothing. Lead us to your people and I’ll consider us even.”

_“I’d be happy to!”_

He cracked his knuckles. “Well, let’s not waste any more time up here! Let’s—”

A shadow fell across him, blotting out the sun. _“Claude, what are you doing?”_

Claude looked up into the face of Prince Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd, head of the Blue Lions house. The sunlight behind him lit up his straw-colored hair, wreathing his face in shadow. “Are you… talking to that mouse?” he asked, his brow furrowing.

“Ah. Hello there, Dimitri, Your Royal Highness-ness.” Claude stood up and somewhat self-consciously adjusted the short amber cape draped over his shoulder. “Yes. Yes I am. Her name is Cornflower and she speaks human very well for a mouse.”

Dimitri blinked. “Excuse me?”

“It’s a long story.” Claude patted him on the shoulder. “Don’t worry about it.”

“I will, if you don’t mind. Is this some kind of novel mindgame? Do you think acting like you’ve gone mad will make me go easier on you next week?”

“For once, no, it isn’t. We’re off to find Edelgard and this mouse here is our best lead.”

“You’re joking.”

Claude shrugged. “If you say so. C’mon, Marianne, let’s mosey. We’ve got a princess to find,” he said, pulling her along as he headed across the campus.

 _“Wait!”_ Dimitri called out, trailing behind them. _“Claude!”_

* * *

Vejovis had long since shed his disguise of Albus von Barlowe, revealing under the face of a kindly apothecary a deathly pale, corpselike visage traced with ancient sigils long since ravaged by time. He sat in his gloomy study underneath his shop, bound to his chair by a network of tightly-bound ropes—the handiwork of Petra and her well-honed hunter’s skills. No one knew how better to tie something up than a warrior princess from Brigid, Hubert had to admit.

“Are you ready to talk now?” Hubert asked him, tossing aside an empty vial of truth serum he’d taken from the apothecary’s own stores.

“Truthfully?” Vejovis cocked his head. Crusted blood, so dark red it was nearly brown, cracked like dry lips around his mouth and chin as he spoke in a pained rasp. “Hmm… How do I say this? No, I don’t think I am.”

“How did you find out where Edelgard was hiding?” Hubert asked. “Where is she right now? What have you done with her?”

Vejovis didn’t answer.

Hubert crossed his arms. “I asked you a question. _Several_ questions.”

“Simply because you have given me truth serum does not mean I have any obligation to answer.” Vejovis smiled. “Truthfully, I would prefer to remain silent.”

“Oh, come on. Aren’t you dastardly villains constantly beset with the compulsive urge to make grandiose proclamations about all about your evil plans? I know _I_ am.”

“Give it a rest, Hubert,” Linhardt said from his perch on Hubert’s shoulder. “I tried this with him yesterday. It didn’t work.”

“Hmm. Well… if my theory is right,” Hubert said, taking another look at the ledger, “I have another way to make this cretin speak.” The quantities in the ledger didn’t add up. Kronya had been buying massive amounts of the raw materials needed for _polymorphus muridae,_ but as for its antidote, _antemorphus muridae…_ suffice to say, he had noticed the suspicious absences of quite a few key ingredients.

The trapdoor in the ceiling opened and Ferdinand, Petra, and Dorothea clambered back down the stairs, all empty-handed.

“You didn’t find them, did you?” Hubert asked them. His three classmates all shook their heads. “Not even the powdered Dagdan wormwood?”

“We were not finding them,” Petra said. “What is making these ingredients so important?”

Hubert began to laugh, first a sinister chuckle, then a wicked, full-throated cackle, then a maniacal belly laugh.

“Wh… What is so funny, Hubert?” Ferdinand asked, clearly dreading the answer.

Hubert slapped his hand on top of the ledger, all but doubling over in the throes of his laughter.

“Um… yes… would you care to let _me_ in on the joke?” Vejovis asked. “I’m afraid I don’t… what’s the expression… _get_ it?”

Hubert caught his breath, then pulled the bottle of _polymorphus muridae_ out of his cloak. “You are going to answer me,” he said, “or I will pour this bottle’s contents down your wicked gullet.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.” Hubert looked Vejovis dead in the eye. “You’ve been making poison like there’s no tomorrow, but you don’t have the ingredients for the antidote.”

“Yes,” Vejovis answered. “So?”

“Must I spell it out for you, insufferable ignoramus? If you drink this, there’ll be no coming back.”

Vejovis smiled. “Yes. It’s true. We don’t have the ingredients to make a proper antidote. Anybody we turn is never going to turn back. And that includes your precious princess and the lazy one perched on your shoulder… and the loudmouth… and the recluse. They will never be human again.”

“Do not listen to him, Caspar,” Ferdinand assured the furry passenger riding in his jacket. “Surely these fiends do not have a monopoly on the antidote.”

Hubert’s fist clenched around the glass bottle, his grip digging into the pages of the ledger. He could feel electricity arcing through his bloodstream, fire and ice squeezing his heart, his teeth grinding against each other. For the first time in his life, he felt not a cold, calculating fury but a burning, bestial rage within him. He wanted to reduce Vejovis to a bloody mess. Him and all of these wretched slitherers!

“But…” he gasped, struggling to rein in his temper. He could tell that he must look frightful, perhaps even demonic, because the rest of his classmates were staring at him with wide, concerned eyes. He cleared his throat. Obviously, Vejovis was trying to get a rise out of him. It wouldn’t work.

“But you haven’t been using this for getting _rid_ of people,” he said. “You’ve been using it for infiltration. You’ve been positioning your agents inside Garreg Mach as mice, preparing to launch a decapitation strike against the Church of Seiros when the time is right.”

“Who told you that?”

“Kronya, in so many words.”

“Ah, Kronya. Yes, you’ve caught us.” Vejovis wriggled his shoulders in an attempted shrug. “Good job.”

“But now they’re all stuck like that,” Dorothea chimed in. “If you can’t make a proper antidote, then haven’t you turned your soldiers into mice for nothing?”

“Why would you be doing that in the first place,” Petra asked, “if you were knowing you did not have the ingredients for the antidote?”

Vejovis looked away, clearly ashamed. “We… had an order placed for the other ingredients, but the merchant’s boat sank,” he mumbled sheepishly. “Now some of them are out-of-season, I’m afraid…”

“What good fortune,” Hubert sardonically quipped through gritted teeth. “Now, answer my questions. One, who was it who poisoned Edelgard’s cup at the dining hall? Two, who was it who stole from my quarters? Three, how did you learn where Edelgard was hiding? And four, where is she now?”

For a moment, Vejovis simply looked up at him, dumbfounded, his caterpillar eyebrows furrowing. “Dining hall? I don’t recall hearing anything about a dining hall. Or about anything from your quarters being stolen. Why would we steal from somebody who was ostensibly on our side?”

“Because I had the antidote, and you don’t.”

Vejovis’ face fell. “…I didn’t know that.”

Hubert was taken aback. The answers were a shock to his system—like a cold bath or a plunge into a frozen lake in the middle of winter, a frigid burst so powerful it burned. Edelgard’s attempted assassination, which had ensnared Bernadetta in this tangled web, and the burglary of his bedroom had had nothing to do with those who slither in the dark? Then _who_ had his antidote right now?

“As for your other questions, those of us who haven’t been turned into mice were delighted to put our plan to take open control of Adrestia into place once we heard that Edelgard had gone missing,” Vejovis said. “And we found out where she was hiding thanks to your loudmouthed friend with the blue hair, who was so kind as to shout two names at me when I captured him.”

Hubert glared at Caspar, who had been peeking out from behind the lapel of Ferdinand’s jacket but quickly hid himself.

“Turning your two friends into mice gave me the idea to do it to Edelgard, although, of course, I had to outsource the job to one of the other agents in the monastery, as I had been grievously injured in a very delicate part of my body,” Vejovis continued. “But you say there was somebody who tried to do that to her _first?_ What a fascinating coincidence!”

“That’s—” Hubert stepped back. His hands were trembling. “This is— _What?”_

“My agent warped into the Varley girl’s quarters, drugged both her and Edelgard, and took them to the cellars. Where they are now is anybody’s guess, although I heard from one of our regrettably tiny soldiers this morning that a very Edelgard-like mouse was spotted scurrying around Abyss last night.”

“Abyss…” Linhardt murmured. “I didn’t think that place really existed. Fascinating…”

“But I can tell you one thing I know for certain, Hubert,” Vejovis said with a wicked, bloodstained smile, the shallow cut running across his wrinkled throat cracking open and blood oozing anew down his neck as he looked up at Hubert with pure white eyes. “You have little time before the grieving Emperor Ionius, knowing his time in this world is short, names a new successor to his throne in the tragic absence of his daughter. And while the Adrestian Empire transforms into the Argarthan Empire, poor Princess Edelgard will live out the rest of her days consigned to mousehood—alone, hungry, naked, and afraid, scavenging for scraps in the bowels of the church… slithering in the dark. You gambled with her safety and the future of her empire, not knowing that you were betting against a… what’s it called? A royal flush?”

Hubert felt a cold fury seize him. “Dorothea, Petra, Ferdinand,” he called out, “go upstairs and find me the most flammable potions he has.”

“All _three_ of us?” Ferdinand asked.

“All _four_ of you,” Hubert clarified, plucking Linhardt off his shoulder and passing him to Dorothea in spite of his protests.

None of them budged. He glanced back at them. _“Now!”_ he barked.

His fellow students hastily slipped up the stairs and left him alone with Vejovis.

“Ah… whatever could you have to say to me that you don’t want your friends overhearing?” Vejovis asked, still grinning. “Could it be that you are more like your father than you let on? Marvelous misdirection, constantly speaking ill of him to make yourself look like a mere loyal vassal…”

Hubert closed the distance between himself and the old man, looming over him. Vejovis had to crane his neck to meet his eyes. “Choose your words carefully.”

“You have a knack for duplicity, young man. I knew you were in league with Thales, but never dreamed you would take _our_ side in the schism over him. What pushed you over the edge? Was it Lady Edelgard’s incessant bloviating about, oh, what does she call it, ‘equality and fairness for all?’ Or perhaps her boneheaded compulsion to constantly insult and threaten us with death every time we convene for a meeting?” Vejovis smiled. “It really is the most charitable interpretation of your actions, considering that all this happened because of _you.”_

Hubert forced his hand between Vejovis’ teeth and wrenched the vile man’s jaw open, then shoved the bottle of poison as deep into his mouth as he could force it. _“You chose… poorly,”_ he snarled.

The sound of the old man’s wretched gurgling and gagging rang in his ears for the second time that day as every last drop of the poison drained from the tiny bottle, the muscles of Vejovis’ throat pulsing as the poison ran down his gullet. His bloody hand clamped around Vejovis’ throat, digging into the frail and wrinkled folds of flesh as he gripped tighter and tighter.

“You disgusting vermin,” Hubert spat, tightening his grip on Vejovis’ neck. The vile old man shuddered and convulsed, the tight ropes binding him slackening and his bloodstained clothes hanging looser and looser on his shoulders as his flesh began to melt like candlewax and mold itself like soft clay. “You odious, reprehensible beast of a man. It will be _you_ who dies slithering in the dark and scrounging for scraps—you and the rest of your filth. In the name of Lady Edelgard, perdition take every last one of you!”

He grasped tighter and tighter until he was gripping not a man but a tiny, filthy, bloodstained rodent squirming and squealing in his clenched fist; he kept squeezing, his thumb and forefinger pressing against the delicate bones in the mouse’s neck as it squeaked and scratched and bit at his flesh, nipping futilely at his knuckles.

Black flame engulfed his fist, reducing Vejovis’ fur and flesh to ash and leaving nothing but brittle, blackened bones in his grasp. He threw them to the floor and stomped on them for good measure until nothing remained but a charred smear under his boot.

He stood there in silence, aware only of his ragged breaths straining his lungs. The scent of burnt hair and flesh stung his nostrils.

As despair formed a hollow in his gut, Hubert fell to his knees, feeling for the first time as hopeless and forlorn as he’d felt all those years ago when Edelgard had first been spirited away. He’d been only ten years old, and though he’d managed to escape his father and remain on the run for three entire days before the soldiers had found him and dragged him back home, he hadn’t had a chance of finding her, let alone rescuing her. The sensation of loss he had felt back then had been akin to losing his arms and legs. He hadn’t felt whole again until she’d returned. Now he felt it again—an emptiness, a phantom pain, a lonely and aggrieved anguish.

 _“Lady Edelgard…”_ he choked, his voice nothing but a hollow, hoarse rasp. He buried his face in his bloody hands. _“Lady Edelgard…!”_

* * *

Edelgard stared grimly ahead as the wagon sped down the gloomy halls of Abyss, the wind ruffling her fur and whipping through her cloak and her mane. The wagon passed through hills of torchlight and vales of darkness, speeding across desolate wastes and underneath towering wooden beams braced against the walls and ceiling. A looming colossus sped past, slipping away so quickly and towering so high overhead that Edelgard didn’t notice until it had nearly left her peripheral vision that it was a human skeleton.

The stench of the rats pulling the wagon stung her nostrils; the rank, musky odor seemed to slip all the way into her brain, where it lingered as a constant sense of anxiety, a constant expectation of catastrophe, no matter how forcefully she tried to quell it. Perhaps, she thought, this was how Bernadetta felt all the time.

She held one paw over her snout to minimize the stench and held her axe in the other, keeping the blade within spitting distance of her driver’s neck. The hostage mage kept a steady grip on the two sets of reins running from the two rats’ harnesses.

“Hey, Edelgard? Wanna trade spots?” Matthias asked from the back of the wagon. “I can hold the guy hostage for a bit.”

“No, that’s fine,” Edelgard said.

“What about you, Bernie? You wanna hold the guy hostage for a while?”

“Um… no thanks.” Bernadetta shook her head and looked out over the side of the wagon at the floor speeding by.

“Right. Silly question of me. I mean, what would you do, hold an arrow to his throat?”

“Can we maybe not hold me hostage at all?” the mage piped up.

“No,” Edelgard said. She couldn’t help but imagine how easily the mage could catch her off guard if she didn’t have her blade so close to his furry little neck. He could kill the three of them in so many different ways if she gave him the smallest opening…

“Look, we’re in the same boat, Lady Edelgard,” the mage said. “Odesse told us we’d only be mice for a couple weeks. It’s been almost three months now. I just want to taste chocolate again.”

“You would betray your people for _chocolate?”_ Edelgard asked.

“I’d betray my people for a ham sandwich at this point, m’lady,” the mage said. “Being a mouse sucks. It took me a solid _week_ to get used to having a tail. And then there’s the colorblindness! Green is my _favorite_ color! And everything’s so _big!_ And you’re all hairy, and your teeth don’t stop growing, and then there’s the _whiskers…”_

Edelgard shuddered. “Please don’t remind me.”

“Hey, hold on.” Matthias leaned forward. “You used to be _human?”_

“Well, yes,” the mage said, glancing at him over his shoulder for a second before turning his attention back to the road. “Didn’t _you?”_

Matthias stuck out his tongue. “Ugh! Ew! No!”

“Pardon me.” The mage shrugged. “I guess being a mouse might be pretty cool if you don’t know any better. Anyway, Lady Edelgard, as I was saying, I’d gladly join your side if you’d help me become human again. I’m… assuming that’s what you want, too?”

Edelgard pulled her axe a hair’s-breadth away from his throat. It could still be a trick—she couldn’t afford to lower her guard. “What’s your name?” she asked, her words saturated with skepticism.

“Wesper Grahan. I’m not one of those creepy tattooed mole people; I work for Myson. He roped our whole squadron into this craziness.”

“Imperial mage corps?”

Wesper nodded.

“Where do you hail from?”

“Hevring county. But I was stationed all the way over in Enbarr when Myson took me on this mission.” Wesper let out a put-upon sigh muffled by his beaked mask. “Said it’d give me a whole new perspective. Cheeky dastard. If I knew _this_ was what he’d meant, I’d have told him to pound sand.”

“What is he doing here? What does he plan to do with those infants?”

Wesper shrugged. “Damned if I know. I’m just the driver. Nobody tells me jack shit except where to drive. ‘Enlist in the mage corps,’ they said. ‘You’ll become a powerful warlock,’ they said…”

Not entirely convinced, but satisfied, Edelgard pulled the axe away. Wesper breathed a sigh of relief. “You will have your revenge, Wesper. I promise you that—and your humanity as well. And chocolate.”

Wesper bowed curtly. “You had me at ‘and chocolate,’ Princess Edelgard.”

Though she still kept a suspicious eye on him, Edelgard was glad to retreat into the back of the wagon, far enough away from the stench of the rats that her head felt noticeably clearer, and sat down next to Bernadetta as she kept watch.

“Must be hard,” Matthias mumbled, absentmindedly stroking the blade of his sword with a rag.

“Excuse me?”

“Being a mouse when you’re used to being human.” His eyes met Edelgard’s. “I’m sorry.”

Edelgard shrugged noncommittally.

“Well, I think you’re a beautiful mouse.”

“Excuse me?”

“I mean, humans are these great, big, ugly, lumbering giants, but you must’ve been pretty beautiful for a human if you ended up this pretty as a—” Matthias bowed his head. “Um, I’m gonna… Y’know, just… forget I said anything.” He scurried from the left side of the wagon to the right side. “I’m gonna talk to Wesper,” he decided, standing up and heading to the front of the wagon. “Hi, Wesper. My name’s Matthias. Sorry we killed your buddy. Anyway, y’know, being a mouse isn’t _all_ bad…”

Edelgard leaned back against the side of the wagon, hoping it would catch up to Myson while her rage still burned inside her.

She had told herself that this was about finding out her foe’s intentions first and foremost, but she couldn’t deny that there was more to it than that.

They would die. Those squirming, mewling pups so young they could not even open their eyes. Every single one of them. How could any of those little wretches be strong enough to survive what _she_ alone had survived? And Matthias’ brother had simply replied that they could _make more…_

What was _happening_ to her? Had becoming a mouse altered her very thoughts? Such rank sentimentality… Her conscience, which she could ignore in so many other areas, simply would not permit her to leave these mice to their fates—yet another part of her that, like her tail, resisted her control.

Her duty to return—for the good of her empire, for all of Fódlan—far outweighed any messianic fairy tales these mice had concocted, and yet…

The wagon made a hard left turn, jolting her out of her ruminations as Bernadetta stumbled and let out a shrill yelp.

“I can see them!” Matthias called out.

Edelgard leaped to the front of the wagon. Down a dusty stretch of forgotten hallway, Myson’s wagon sped onward, five swordsmice guarding its cargo in back. “Bernadetta, ready your bow and take aim,” she ordered. “We have the advantage here: they’re lacking in ranged weaponry. We can pick the soldiers off from a distance without risking a counterattack, then close in to finish them off. Don’t kill Myson, though—I want him alive.”

“Got it!” Bernadetta nocked an arrow and drew the bowstring taut, lining up her shot. “Um… none of these mice are nice like you, are they, Wesper?”

“Nope, they’re all assholes. Fire away.”

“I give the orders around here, Wesper,” Edelgard reminded the mage.

Wesper nodded contritely. “Yes, Your Majesty.”

“Fire away, Bernadetta.”

“Yes, Your Majesty!”

The first volley sailed through the air and struck one of the swordsmice in the chest, planting a bloody flag. The sword slipped from the mouse’s hand as he lost his grip on the wagon and tumbled, limp as a ragdoll, to the floor.

 _“Got’em!”_ Bernadetta whooped, lining up her next shot. Just as her hand left the arrow, though, the wagon’s wheel hit a stone, and though the rats paid it no heed, the wagon shuddered and rattled with a savage jolt that wrenched her arm and bow upward. The arrow flew aimlessly into the air and vanished into the shadows, striking nothing of importance.

“Keep firing,” Edelgard told her. Though she was fearsome at her best, Bernadetta was exactly the sort of person to suffer from a failure spiral if left unchecked—miss one shot, panic, miss more shots, panic more…

Bernadetta steadied herself against the side of the wagon as she took aim again. “H-Here goes…”

Another arrow, another felled soldier tumbling out of the back of the wagon.

“We should start closing in now that we’ve got their attention. Wesper, tell the rats to go faster.”

“Got it.” Wesper lashed the reins; the rats scurried faster. Myson’s wagon began to loom closer.

“Three more, Bernadetta,” Edelgard said, falling back to stand at her side as the wagon rattled and rocked again.

“Right. Got it!” Bernadetta nocked another arrow and fired. Another soldier fell. “I-I’m doing it!”

“How long will it be before that stops taking you by surprise?” Edelgard ribbed her, patting her on the head. “Two more.”

Myson’s wagon drew closer. Victory was already well within reach. Edelgard felt a tingling wave of anticipation rush through her body—she swore she could feel her fur standing on end. When she caught and subdued him, she would have answers—who among those who slither in the dark had done this to her? What was their master plan? How could she kill them?

And the infants, too—she could save them from suffering as her siblings had…

Bernadetta lined up another shot, but it went wide and sailed through empty space as Myson’s wagon came to a dead stop and zipped past, vanishing into one of the stretches of darkness filling the hallway.

“Huh?” Edelgard whirled around, tightening her grip on her axe. “Wesper, turn this thing around! Don’t let them get away!”

The wagon turned in a slow, wide arc, its rats scrabbling at the floor and kicking up little stones and bits of debris with their paws.

A harsh blue light twinkled in the darkness; Edelgard felt a prickling sensation and an oppressive, earthy pressure around her, like the air before a thunderstorm. _“Get down!”_

She dropped to the floor of the wagon, grabbing Bernadetta and dragging her down with her just as a crackling burst of blue-white light cut through the air where Bernadetta’s head had been just an instant ago. The air hummed and buzzed like a wasp in the wake of the searing light, an acrid smell settling overhead. Damn—they’d gotten within range of Myson’s mages!

Myson’s wagon peeled out of the darkness, its rats bounding forward, luminous blue smoke pouring from their gaping mouths. As Myson’s wagon slipped past Edelgard’s, one of the two swordsmice leaped across the narrowing gap between them, his crude sword meeting Matthias’ well-crafted blade. Matthias was an amateur, though, in spite of his weapon’s natural advantage—he was put on the back foot within a second. Myson’s swordsmice must have been well-trained, seasoned soldiers before they’d been transformed.

Wesper lobbed a fireball at Myson’s wagon, hitting one of the rats in the shoulder and leaving scorched, blackened flesh. The rat hissed and squealed, writhing and rearing up against its master’s wishes; its unruly behavior dragged the wagon every which way, leaving it pitching left and right helplessly.

Edelgard ducked under a swing of the swordsmouse’s blade and buried her axe in his shoulder, disarming him; Matthias finished him off, burying his blade in his chest and wrenching it free with a spurt of blood. Bernadetta pushed the bleeding corpse off the side of the wagon for good measure.

Another burst of blue-white light lanced through the air, narrowly missing Edelgard’s shoulder but tearing a hole in the side of the wagon. In its wake, the beam left a perfect circle chewed through the wood panels, the edges charred black and glowing with twinkling embers.

“Get closer!” Edelgard ordered Wesper. “Matthias, you and I will board Myson’s wagon as soon as we meet.”

“Y-You’re going to _board_ them?” Bernadetta gasped. “But Edelgard—”

Matthias looked at the damage to the wagon. “No offense, Edelgard—I’d follow you to the end of the world, sure, no questions asked—”

“You’re asking one right now.”

“—but I don’t wanna end up with a hole like that in my tummy.”

“Those mages—and Myson himself—are restricted up close. If we’re in the wagon with them, they can’t use their spells without risking damage to their cargo,” Edelgard explained. “In close quarters, we win.”

Matthias nodded. “Okay. You’re the expert.”

Myson’s wagon hobbled forward; Edelgard’s quickly caught up.

“On my mark,” Edelgard said.

“What do I do?” Bernadetta piped up.

“If you find a shot, take it!”

As Edelgard’s wagon carried itself apace with Myson’s, Myson’s wagon suddenly and violently pitched left, the two wagons clashing together; their wooden frames rattled and Edelgard felt herself lose her footing and slide backward.

The fifth and final swordsmouse scurried from one wagon to the other, his crude sword flashing in a glittering arc; Edelgard raised her axe to parry the blade to no avail; it slipped past her defenses and buried herself in her shoulder. As fortune would have it, it was the same shoulder whose joint she’d dislocated and popped back into place the night before—she gritted her teeth and clenched her jaw against the pain. As the swordsmouse started to slide the blade free, she reached out and grabbed it in her paw, holding it fast; searing pain cut through her fingers as she kept the rough length of scrap metal sheathed in her shoulder.

The swordsmouse looked down at her with a light in his eyes born of equal parts awe and fear, then pain and confusion, as she buried her axe in his side.

_“Hey, Edelgard!”_

She turned her head just in time to see a magic sigil light itself up in front of Myson’s paws as the warlock grinned savagely—

 _“Jump!”_ she shouted out.

A forest of black spikes shot up from the floor, lancing through the rats pulling her wagon and stopping them dead in their tracks, their bodies splitting apart under the sharp blades of dark magic. The wagon went flying.

The next thing Edelgard knew, she was clinging to the side of Myson’s wagon for dear life, her ribs burning and aching, her bruises from last night’s battle inflamed anew from the force of the impact. The other wagon, now rapidly falling behind, had been ripped in half and overturned, its wooden frame bent and buckled, spattered with dark bloodstains from the torn-apart rats still tied to it. She couldn’t see Bernadetta, Matthias, or Wesper—had they been thrown clear of the crash? Or…

There was a sharp, painful tug at the base of her tail. A muffled outcry that sounded vaguely like _“Edelgard!”_

Edelgard looked down and saw the rest of the wreckage dragging itself along, its splintered wreckage embedded in the side of the wagon. Bernadetta clutched her tail in one paw, clung to the side of the wagon with the other, and held her bow in her mouth. Matthias and Wesper had been carried in the wreckage as well—injured, bloodstained, but alive.

She threw herself over the side of the wagon and onto its floor, pulling Bernadetta along with her. Matthias and Wesper joined her. The six mouse pups she’d come this far to rescue were huddled in a heap in the corner.

“Edelgard von Hresvelg.” Myson turned to face them as his mages preoccupied themselves with driving. “And whoever you three are; I don’t care,” he added, glancing with disinterest at Bernadetta and the others before refocusing on Edelgard. “You’re shorter than I expected.”

“Myson. It’s over.” Edelgard hefted her axe; the exertion made her pierced shoulder scream and beg for mercy. “Surrender and I’ll let you keep your favorite arm.”

Myson tugged on the wide brim of his peaked hat, as though daring Edelgard to make a move against him. “Bold words from a filthy rat.”

Edelgard stiffened. “How dare you—”

“Oh, did I offend her majesty?” he spat.

“Stop this wagon,” Matthias said, leveling his sword at him. “A-And tell us what you were going to do with our pups so I know how mad I’m supposed to be at you! Because I’m already really mad, and I want to make sure I don’t need to be any madder!”

“We have you right where we want you, Myson,” Edelgard said. “Stop this wagon or we’ll stop it for you.” She looked to Bernadetta and Wesper. “On my mark, shoot the mages.”

“Wait!” Myson threw up his paws. “Wait, hold on. _I’m_ the one who has you right where I want you.”

Edelgard steeled herself. He was up to something. “Bernadetta, Wesper, fire—”

Three columns of violet-white light split the air, leaving dancing sparks and spots in their wake; Myson and his two mages vanished. An eerie silence fell over the hallway. The rats pulling the wagon, no longer under anyone’s control, came to a halt and began trying to pull the wagon in two separate directions, irritably gnawing at their harnesses.

Matthias broke the silence. “All right! We did it!” he cried out, pumping his fist in the air. “Oh, sorry about not capturing or interrogating that Myson guy, or really getting any sort of straight answer out of him whatsoever.” He shrugged. “Maybe next time?”

Edelgard dropped her axe and slumped over against the side of the wagon, pressing her paw to her shoulder to staunch the bleeding. “Wesper, take the reins. I don’t want to find out what Myson meant when he said he had us right where he wants us.”

Wesper nodded, adjusted his mask, and rushed up front. “Yes, Your Highness. I don’t, either.”

Bernadetta knelt at Edelgard’s side, tearing off a strip of her cloak and tying it around her wound. “I—I can’t believe we survived that. Are you alright?”

“I’m—”

Edelgard paused. Sniffed the air. Her whiskers quivered, her ears twitching. She looked out into the darkness ahead of the wagon as a chill crept up her spine and her tail reflexively curled itself around her.

Something was coming. Something familiar, something—

She shivered and pulled her cloak around herself.

Something _terrifying._

“We have to leave,” she gasped, breathless, _“now.”_

Wesper snapped the reins and turned the wagon around. As the wagon spun in a wide arc, Edelgard caught a flash of twin lights in the darkness.

And out of the darkness, bounding on all fours, came a giant rat, scarred and scruffy and clad in scraps of tarnished armor, a serrated kitchen knife as long as it was tall tied to its back. It scurried across the floor, its wicked claws scraping against the stone, drawing nearer with every step it took. Twin pinpricks of baleful blue light shone in the eye sockets of the wicked, age-yellowed skull it wore for a helmet.

Matthias screamed. _“Wesper, go faster!”_

Wesper glanced back as the Plague Rat kept gaining on the wagon, rapidly closing the distance between the two of them. _“What the hell is that?”_

 _“What do you mean, ‘what the hell is that?’ He’s on_ your _side!”_

_“I defected!”_

_“Yeah, like half an hour ago!”_

_“I’ve never seen that thing before in my life! I told you! I’m a_ driver! _No one tells me anything!”_

While the other mice argued, Edelgard felt her heart pound against her aching ribs, her chest heaving as her breath caught in her throat. She reached out to grasp something for purchase, to anchor her, to keep her sane, and her paw found Bernadetta’s, her fingers curling tightly to grasp it. “Just keep going faster!” she called out to Wesper as the Plague Rat inched closer and closer. “He’s gaining on us!”

Bernadetta let go of her and nocked an arrow. “I-I think I can slow him down!” She stood up and took aim, swaying unsteadily as the wagon rocked and shuddered. She fired an arrow. It missed. The Plague Rat drew closer.

She fired another arrow, her paws shaking, her bow trembling. It missed. The Plague Rat drew closer. She glanced at Edelgard, eyes wide with fear, then nocked four arrows at once and fired them all at the fearsome creature. One missed, two glanced off the beast’s armor, but one stuck in a gap between his armor and stood up like a banner.

Another arrow found its mark, then another. Bernadetta slipped to the rear of the wagon and crouched down, aiming over the back to steady herself. Her next arrow buried itself in the Plague Rat’s eye, extinguishing one of the eerie lights in the eye sockets of his macabre helmet.

“I-I did it? _I did it—!”_

With an anguished bellow, the Plague Rat leaped forward, digging his claws into the wagon’s wooden frame. The whole wagon shuddered under the force of the impact. Edelgard felt the wooden frame rattle and almost feared it would collapse. Bernadetta skittered backward, struggling to nock another arrow with the Plague Rat bearing down on her.

Edelgard threw herself between the two of them, swinging her axe with all her might. The blade scored a deep gash across the Plague Rat’s bone helmet, the force of the blow knocking him back.

With another roar, the Plague Rat ripped his enormous knife free of its restraints and swung it downward. Edelgard parried the blow; the force of the impact sent a jolt of pain running up her arm and blossoming in her injured shoulder. She cried out and fell to her knees, the serrated edge of the knife scraping against the haft of her axe and leaving a notch in the wood as the Plague Rat drew it back and readied it for another mighty strike.

The beast began to laugh. _“Die, Edelgard von Hresvelg! Die!”_ he bellowed, raising the knife overhead and swinging it downward in a shining arc.

Matthias leaped forward, parrying the knife with his sword. _“Get away from her! That’s our_ savior _you’re trying to kill!”_

Her breath ragged, her lungs burning, Edelgard pulled herself upright, leaning on her axe for support. She couldn’t die down here—not with so much left unfulfilled. Her empire, her ambitions, her father, her classmates, her teacher…

She felt an arm fall across her uninjured shoulder and a bowstring stretch taut at her side. _“I’m sor—I-I mean, I’m already regretting this!”_ Bernadetta squeaked in her ear. _“But I need something to help me aim!”_

Edelgard nodded and let go of her axe. “I’ve got you.” She wrapped her arm around Bernadetta’s waist and took hold of her outstretched arm, steadying it as the two of them took aim at the beast together.

For the first time in her life, she realized, she had no idea what the hell she was doing. It was almost exhilarating.

Bernadetta’s arrow sang through the air and buried itself in the Plague Rat’s other eye socket, blinding him; as he reeled backward, Edelgard swept her axe off the floor of the wagon and struck him across the chest, knocking him off his feet and off the wagon. As she watched him tumble and roll across the floor and dwindle away into the distance, she sank to her knees, shivering uncontrollably.

The Plague Rat ripped the arrows from his eyes, tossed them aside, and slinked back into the shadows, vanishing like a phantom.

* * *

With the Plague Rat far behind them, Edelgard and her entourage continued on their way through the halls, their battered and beleaguered wagon creaking and moaning as the weary rats pulled it along. A somber silence had settled over the four of them: though they’d been victorious, they had little energy left to celebrate their good fortune.

Edelgard’s wounds still stung and ached, even though Wesper had done his best to heal them. Though it was nigh impossible to tell the passage of time down here, it couldn’t have been that far past noon, and she was already exhausted. Bernadetta clung to her, sound asleep; she’d fainted as soon as Edelgard had let go of her.

“Hey, Edelgard?” Matthias asked as he cradled two of the rescued pups in his arms. “I know this is kind of out of the blue, but mind if I ask you a question?”

“It depends,” Edelgard said, trying not to look at what he was holding. She was glad she’d saved those children _in principle_ , but she couldn’t lie to herself—they were hideous little gremlins and looking at them made her taste bile in the back of her throat. “I will tell you when you ask it.”

“I want your advice. Let’s say, for example—not saying this isn’t hypothetical—you had to do something bad to do something good. Like, y’know, a ‘robbing Peter to pay Paul’ situation. Not saying I _robbed_ someone, but you get the idea. Well, figuratively, maybe. Sort of.”

“Are you referring to killing one’s enemies in self-defense?” Edelgard recalled her conversation with Bernadetta on the same subject just a few days ago. It felt like a lifetime ago already. “It’s simply the way the world works. Our consciences have no room for people who would do others harm.”

“Oh, no, I’m fine with killing bad guys. It’s, well…” Matthias shrugged. “A little more… big-picture than that. More like, say, making someone who’s not bad, just generally pretty decent, er, suffer—sort of, just a little—but what you’d get out of it would be, you know, for the greater good.”

“Is it okay to make good people suffer for the greater good, you mean?”

“Yeah, something like that. Well, not _suffer_ suffer, but… inconvenience? Maybe?”

“How great of a good?” Edelgard asked. _The greater good_ justified so many things. It justified the oppression of the Church. It justified the heinous experiments that had claimed the lives of her siblings and left her permanently scarred. It justified so much evil in the minds of those who committed those acts, and yet it justified everything she had done and was going to do—lies, betrayals, violence in the past and yet to come—to create a free Fódlan. It was her duty to prove that _her_ good was greater than all others.

“Freedom. Safety. Well… everything. The future. _That_ kind of greater good. But you’ve got to do something kind of, well… something that makes you a fucking asshole, as Zeke might say,” Matthias wheedled. “I want to get us out of the monastery so we can start a new life, y’know, but…”

“Well, if the worst you can be is an… asshole, you have little to fear. What are you planning?”

“Oh, I—I can’t say,” he uneasily answered, chuckling nervously.

“Any atrocity can and must be excused in the pursuit of your goals if you truly believe your goals are just,” Edelgard told him. “Should you fail and your ideals prove themselves false, then those atrocities will weigh down the executioner’s blade as it swings toward your neck, but should you succeed—then you were right to do them.”

“Ah.” Matthias fell silent, for once, as he ruminated on her words. “So you’re saying it’s okay to cause good people pain, as long as you win. Sort of a might-makes-right deal. I get it.”

“It isn’t quite that simple. There is _nuance.”_

“So… you ever done something rotten for the greater good?”

Edelgard had no need to rack her brain for examples. Things she had done, things she had ordered others to do, things that currently only existed as plans drawn in her head but would soon come to pass… “Have _you?”_ she asked in return.

Matthias suddenly found the floor of the wagon very interesting. “Kinda,” he answered sheepishly. “I guess.”

“Why are you asking _me_ about this? Can’t your older brother teach you about morality?”

“Well, because you’re our prophesied savior—”

Edelgard bristled. Not _this_ again.

“—and so you’re kind of, I guess, a moral paragon by definition? I mean, you can’t be the Chosen One and be a _bad_ person. I mean, whatever you do, it’s gotta be right, right?” Matthias asked. “Like, even when you screamed at us and ran away last night and we had to run after you and bail you out, you were teaching us a lesson.”

“Oh? What lesson was I teaching you?”

He scratched his head. “Dunno. But I’m sure I’ll figure it out if I keep thinking about it.”

“Well, I’ll leave you to it, then,” Edelgard said, gazing out at what little scenery there was to see down here in Abyss.

“I’ve got it!” Matthias took a deep breath. “You were teaching us that even our prophesied savior can’t do it all alone! We can only triumph if we work together! Just like we did here!”

Edelgard sighed. “I suppose.”

“You’re an amazing Chosen One, Edelgard,” Matthias said, chuckling. “I swear, it’s like you were _made_ for this stuff.”

“Imagine that,” she muttered, scratching her cheek as she recalled all the times Thales had lauded her as the salvation of his people, born— _re_ born—of flames to carry on the work of the King of Liberation and cast down false gods.

She would be salvation, but not for him and his ilk. They would meet the same fate as their despised Immaculate One—burned to ash, every last one of them.

And she would start down here.

* * *

Beneath Garreg Mach were the catacombs, and beneath _those_ lay Abyss. It was a gloomy place, lit sporadically by torches, the faint sounds of echoed voices bubbling up through the labyrinthine halls. Claude led the way, hardly able to contain his excitement at exploring such a well-kept secret. He’d heard knights around campus muttering about how much they’d like to sweep through this place and rid themselves of all the human vermin supposedly infesting it, if only they knew how to _get_ to it.

Marianne flanked him on his left, with Cornflower the mouse perched in the palm of her hand to provide directions through the subterranean realm. To his right, Dimitri grimly stalked the halls, tightly gripping the shaft of a simple steel spear he’d borrowed from the training hall, and trailing behind _him_ was Annette Fantine Dominic, one of his classmates in the Blue Lions house. She was a cheerful, optimistic, fiery-haired girl who’d nonetheless been extremely rattled when her neighbor had gone missing and Edelgard’s bloody clothes had been found in her quarters without her hearing so much as a sneeze through the wall.

“I have a bad feeling about this,” Marianne muttered as a looming shadow passed across her face. “Perhaps I should turn back…”

“Don’t worry,” Annette assured her, patting her on the shoulder. “If anyone tries to attack us, Dimitri here will wipe the floor with them! And I’m good with an axe, too…”

Marianne shook her head. “Thank you, but… that’s not what I mean. You’ll have much better luck without me.”

“Oh, give it a rest, Marianne,” Claude told her. She was of the belief that everywhere she went, misfortune followed, and he didn’t believe a word of it. “You’re not chronically unlucky, and even if you _were,_ it’s not a contagious disease. Or maybe my supernaturally good fortune just outweighs all your bad luck.”

“I’m sorry.” She handed the mouse to him. “But please, just take her and go ahead. I’ll head back to the monastery. I can feel something evil coming this way, and I don’t want to bring it upon you…”

“I’m sure there’s nothing evil down here,” Dimitri assured her.

“Yeah,” Annette chimed in, “just thieves, murderers, assorted villains, and whoever’s turning people into mice. But don’t worry! We’ve got strength in numbers!” She began to hum. _“Creepy creepy creepity creep…”_

“And besides, even if there is,” he went on, “you’ve got two of us lords down here with you.” He hefted his spear. “And at least _one_ of us came here prepared.”

“I’m more prepared than you might think,” Claude retorted, slipping a hand into his satchel and pulling out his pocketknife.

“Ah, that must be another one of your brilliant strategies.” Dimitri smirked. “If you keep showing me your hand you’ll have nothing left for the Battle of the Eagle and Lion.”

“You’re assuming I don’t still have a whole deck hidden up my sleeve.” Claude began to hum along with Annette’s little ditty. He had to admit, it had a catchy tune and intriguing lyrics, and she had quite a good voice to match it. _“Living in a land that's dark and blinded by the frigid cold…”_ he faintly sang along.

Dimitri rolled his eyes and took Marianne by the arm, pulling her and her rodent guide aside. “Er… Marianne, right? Why don’t we go on ahead of these two? I don’t think I can afford to have _another_ one of Annette’s songs stuck in my head.” He shuddered. “Not after ‘baby shark.’”

The corridors grew darker, the torches lining the walls sparser, the oppressive shadows silencing the search party. Annette lit a fireball in her palm and held it aloft to brighten the gloomy, claustrophobic halls. “You know… I’d always heard there were _people_ living down here.”

“There have to be,” Dimitri said as he and Marianne led the way. “Someone’s been keeping these torches lit.”

“Maybe we should go back and bring some of the knights down here,” Marianne said.

“I have to admit, Abyss wasn’t quite what I expected,” Claude said, brushing aside a cobweb stretching nearly from floor to ceiling. The silk clung loosely to his hand, gossamer strands fluttering as he pulled them away “Or maybe everyone’s hiding from us.”

A sudden chill ran up his spine as something with tiny, prickling claws and coarse fur flew up his pants and into his shirt. With a shocked shout, Claude nearly leaped into the air, as its claws dug the tiniest of footholds up his chest, and all but ripped his jacket open to catch whatever was attacking him.

His hand came away with a mouse clutched between his fingers. This one had pale cream-colored fur and a short, tousled mane of rusty red cresting its head.

“Can _this_ one talk, too?” Dimitri scoffed. Nevertheless, he loosened his grip on his spear, no doubt relieved that no terrifying enemy had leaped out from the shadows.

“I dunno. Let’s see,” Claude said, raising the mouse to his ear.

 _“Thank the Goddess you found me! Claude, it’s me, Monica von Ochs!”_ the mouse squeaked.

“Monica? The girl they found with Flayn?” Claude asked. How many students had been turned into mice now? There had been Edelgard first, then Bernadetta—the rest of the Black Eagles’ whereabouts were unknown…

“Ask her who did this to her,” Dimitri said, scowling as he glared suspiciously into the darkness.

 _“I can hear you just fine, you know!”_ Monica called out to him, though Claude doubted her voice could carry that far and still be intelligible. “Ugh. It was that dastard traitor, Sol— _Tomas!_ He did this to me!”

“T-Tomas? The librarian?” Taken aback, Claude looked down at Monica as she preened herself in his palm. “Are you _sure?”_ He’d spent so much time with Tomas these past few months—he was so _nice,_ and so willing to share books and other documents the Church didn’t allow the monastery to keep in the library… how could _he_ be the mastermind?

“It couldn’t have been anyone else. I’m sure of it, sure as my name is Monica!” The redheaded mouse shook her head and looked morosely down at her little pink paws. “He’s been experimenting with _polymorphus muridae,_ finding new ways to administer it…”

“Marianne is right. We should pull back and alert the Knights of Seiros,” Dimitri said. “The four of us are in over our heads.”

“Yeah, and I just remembered,” Annette chimed in, “I’m supposed to be on cooking duty today with Mercedes, so we should really get going!”

 _“Ow!”_ Marianne slapped the side of her neck. She pulled her hand away; her pale palm was stained black with the oozing remnants of some sort of large insect plastered to her skin. Her brown eyes met Claude’s, wide and full of worry.

Claude felt a sharp sting on the side of his neck, a needle sliding into his skin; the stabbing jolt of pain, brief as it was before fading away, was enough to make his eyes water. His hand leaped to his neck; his fingertips met something slick and chitinous. A foggy warmth blossomed in his chest and in his head as a wave of vertigo swept through him; prickling pins and needles washed across his skin as he stumbled, suddenly unsteady in his footing; faint, aching twinges burrowed their way through his flesh and into his bones, throbbing.

“I’m sorry, everyone… I think I really should have stayed behind,” Marianne mumbled as her legs gave out and she crumpled into Dimitri’s arms.

Claude didn’t believe in bad luck. He wasn’t even sure about good luck, truthfully. Perhaps, though, he thought as the shadows spun around him and all color and sound seeped out of the world, there was something to Marianne’s so-called curse.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you could hear Wrath Strike playing in your head the instant the Plague Rat showed up, then I did my job well and can die a happy woman. In truth, though, I had the Mad Max: Fury Road soundtrack on loop through the whole chase sequence.
> 
> Do not become addicted to fanfic... it will take hold of you, and you will resent its absence...


	5. Mischiefs of Mice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Claude and Dimitri plumb the depths of Abyss in their search for Edelgard, only to find something entirely different. Bernadetta makes a discovery that shakes her to her core. The Ashen Wolves reveal themselves. Flayn talks about fish.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Ashen Wolves are in this fic now! I was always planning on having them cameo after Cindered Shadows came out, I was just waiting so I could play the DLC and get a better sense of their characters. There will be spoilers about them, especially Yuri's supports with Bernadetta, so reader beware!

Before he’d passed out and woken up as a mouse, Claude had discovered that the mastermind behind this rash of poisonings was Tomas, the monastery’s librarian.

Or, if not the mastermind, then a key player.

Using strange insects with needlelike proboscises and abdomens filled with poison as a transmission vector for poison was such a novel idea that Claude couldn’t really be all that upset about being ensnared in Tomas’ devilish trap. He had to give his respects to the two-faced dastard, really, the same way that a chess player had no choice but to respect a challenging opponent who’d bested them.

The transformation itself, caught in that instant when he’d been enveloped in darkness, had all felt hazy and muddled—dreamlike, but not in any way a good dream. Dreamlike the way dreams could always feel so vague and indistinct, yet contain such vivid and unforgettable sensations. He had felt as though his bones had all melted like candlewax beneath his flesh and he’d been turned inside out. And he had felt the fur growing in, prickling and sharp like an all-over itch he couldn’t scratch. And as for the teeth—the less said about _that,_ the better. Waking up to find that he _hadn’t_ actually dreamed any of those things hadn’t exactly been pleasant.

And on top of that, being pulled out of a mountain of cloth upon waking by a mouse as big as he was came as a bit of a shock to his system on top of… everything else.

He couldn’t have been more than three or four inches tall, he figured judging from the size of the uniform pooled around him; and the world around him looked _wrong,_ the colors all oddly muted, washed-out, and grayish—the torches overhead took on a cold, yellowish-gray hue, though the yellow of his crumpled cape remained shockingly vibrant.

“Claude!” the mouse squeaked in a shockingly human voice. With a crude scrap-metal knife in her paw, she cut away a length of cord that had become knotted around his arm. “Are you okay?”

Startled, Claude let out a sharp, piercing yelp, staggered backward, tripped on his tail (oh, gods, _that_ was going to take some getting used to), and fell flat on his back. “I’ve had better days,” he answered once his heart had stopped trying to force its way out of his ribcage, “Miss….?”

In a split second between his question and the mouse’s response, he racked his brain for an answer, struggling to find some trace of familiarity in the mouse’s quite ordinarily mousy face.

“Cornflower,” the mouse answered, much to his disappointment. Now her voice was more intelligible than the sharp, quiet squeak from before; it had a sharp, withered timbre, like that of an older woman. “You saved me from the snare.”

Snare. Yes, that rang a bell. He scratched his forehead. Though he was in possession of most of his faculties, everything else took some effort to muddle through. He recalled studying polymorph spells with Lysithea, then finding Marianne, then going mouse-hunting, running into Dimitri, heading down into Abyss…

“Er, Claude, sir…”

Claude snapped out of his musings, a little unnerved to be hearing such a human voice coming from a mouse. “Cornflower! Uh… thanks for rescuing me. Could’ve drowned in my own cape,” he told Cornflower, realizing that she was staring at him expectantly. “I guess that makes us even. Where are the others?”

Before he’d even finished asking, something in the periphery of his vision came into focus. That was another thing—he seemed to have gained just a bit _more_ peripheral vision. That plus the whiskers feeling their way through the air around him made up for the colorblindness, he supposed. It certainly made things more interesting.

The thing in the periphery of his vision was a mouse about his size (maybe a little shorter) curled up on the floor, its fur an ashy grayish-white, a veil of pale blue hair spilling over its hunched shoulders.

Claude recalled what Lysithea had said to him about polymorph spells—that the unlucky subjects retained some remnants of their previous forms, like ringing echoes of their former humanity… or stubborn stains. In this mouse’s case, that hair was unmistakable, even if it wasn’t tied back in the usual braided updo anymore.

 _“Marianne!”_ he called out, skittering over to her side. “That’s you, right?”

Marianne looked up at him and immediately looked away, hiding her face. “Claude… is that really you?”

She sounded just like herself. If there were any people in the area, Claude realized, they’d only hear unintelligible squeaks unless they were close enough and focused their hearing, just like he’d had to do to speak with Cornflower and Monica. Yet to his ears, she sounded completely normal.

“In the flesh,” he assured her. “Granted, there’s a lot less of it now, but everything on the inside’s still me.”

“Oh, Goddess,” she mumbled, “why have you cursed us so?”

“I’m sure your goddess has better things to do than curse us,” Claude said to her, grabbing her by the wrist and struggling to pull her upright. Thank the gods he still had thumbs. Come to think of it, he was surprised he could stand upright and walk around so easily. Maybe he’d been dosed with a defective batch of the poison? Or perhaps it was another remnant of humanity leaking out? “Come on, Marianne. Up and at ‘em.”

“This is my punishment,” she lamented. “To be reduced to a beast, to vermin… I am so sorry, Claude, that you have been forced into bearing the burden of my sin with me. Please forgive me. If only I’d turned back…”

“You’d have saved your own skin, but I’m sure I’d still have ended up like this. This isn’t the work of a vengeful goddess, it’s the work of a shifty librarian with a weird hobby, okay? No sense in treating _that_ like a deity.”

Marianne didn’t answer.

“Come on. You’ve got those big ears now; I know you can hear me.”

 _“Claude?”_ a voice he recognized as Annette’s called out to him. _“Is that you?”_

Annette, now a mouse with pale brown fur and a shock of pale brownish-gray hair (Claude assumed that was just the colorblindness), emerged from an ocean of azure cloth; another mouse with tawny fur like a lion’s pelt trailed in her wake, sloughing off the folds of his now preposterously oversize cape like a ship cutting through the ocean waves.

“It’s me, alright,” Claude answered. “Are you two okay?”

“I’m fine,” Annette said, as unflappably chipper as ever. “You’ll be fine, too, Marianne. Just take some time to get used to it!” she told the morose mouse with a gentle, encouraging pat on her shoulder. “What about you, Claude?”

“Give me some time to adjust and I’ll be back to my old self in no time.” Claude crossed his arms over his chest authoritatively. “Well, figuratively speaking, at least,” he added. “And Dimitri?”

Dimitri stared at him with a dour expression (but what else was new?) on his little mousy face and a hard, almost haunted look in his icy blue eyes. _“…Claude?”_ he rasped, squinting.

“I see I haven’t lost my unique charm and good looks, even as a mouse,” Claude answered with a grin.

“I couldn’t recognize you at all until you opened your mouth,” Dimitri retorted, shaking his head. His voice grew stronger with use. “You just look like any old rodent.”

That, unfortunately, wasn’t the first time anyone had called Claude a rodent. He almost wished he could say the same about Dimitri, but a mouse with fur the same golden hue as a wheat field wasn’t exactly a normal sight.

“So we’re all safe and sound?” Dimitri asked. “Annette? Marianne?”

“Present!” Annette chirped, holding up a paw.

Marianne mumbled noncommittally and shrugged.

“And you.” Dimitri turned his gaze on Cornflower. “Who are you?”

“Um… Cornflower, sir.”

“Who?”

“The talking mouse who led us down here,” Claude reminded him.

Dimitri blinked bemusedly, then raised a paw to his forehead as though to soothe a headache. “Right. Were you human once, too?”

“Goodness, no!” Cornflower gasped, laying a paw across her chest as though she’d been horribly offended. “I’ve been a mouse all my life!”

“I’m sure His Highness here meant no disrespect,” Claude said. “It’s just that none of us have met a talking mouse before.”

“I should hope not,” she snapped. “We stay out of your way for a reason.”

Claude felt he knew well enough what that reason might be, so he decided not to further press the issue. Humans treated rodents badly enough, let alone other humans who spoke and looked and thought differently from them, and would probably treat intelligent, _talking_ rodents even worse.

Dimitri's eyes met those of his fellow classmates in turn. “Anyway, it’s good to see you all well, albeit… small and fuzzy.”

“Miss, um… Cornflower, right?” Annette asked their guide. “What exactly happened? Can you tell us how long we’ve been unconscious?”

Cornflower opened her mouth to speak.

“You were unconscious?” Dimitri asked, wrinkling his nose.

“Everything went black,” Annette explained, “and then I woke up like this…”

“I passed out,” Marianne offered, “and… it was like a vivid nightmare…” She bowed her head. “I’m so sorry to have brought this fate upon you…”

Claude nodded. _Vivid_ was right. Dreamlike as it had felt, and although he’d had no awareness of his surroundings, he couldn’t forget the unique pain of the transformation whether he wanted to or not. It seemed that everybody affected by the poison experienced the transformation differently, though. Why? Was it something to do with mental readiness, or strength of will, or some inherent characteristic of the body?

Cornflower opened her mouth to speak again.

“None of you were _awake_ through the whole thing?” Dimitri asked in a tone that very plainly suggested that _he_ had been.

“Y-You _were?”_ Annette stammered.

“I was awake, too,” Cornflower finally managed to butt in. She shuddered. “It was the most horrifying thing I’d ever seen in my life!”

“It’d be nice if I could say it was the worst experience in my life,” Dimitri said to her.

“Are you okay?” Claude asked him.

Dimitri nodded.

Annette rested a paw on his shoulder. “Are you _sure?”_

Dimitri brushed her paw aside. “So, is everyone accounted for?” he asked the room, eager to change the subject. His voice echoed in the hall. “We’re not missing anyone?”

A piteous, put-upon moan answered him; without hesitation, he leaped into action, and the others followed.

Claude and Dimitri followed the moan and found a pale mouse sprawled on the floor, limbs akimbo. Though the shock of red hair cresting the mouse’s head had faded to a pale yellow-gray (damn that colorblindness), Claude recognized her as Monica von Ochs, the mouse who’d scurried up his shirt before they’d been attacked.

 _Suspiciously soon_ before they’d been attacked, Claude thought. And yet an injured person was still an injured person…

“Monica,” he hissed urgently, dropping to his knees and trying to help her up. “Are you okay?”

Monica winced and flopped onto the ground despite his best efforts, her legs twitching. It was only then that Claude noticed that while a mouse’s hind legs didn’t quite have the same proportions as a pair of human legs, he was fairly certain they weren’t supposed to bend like _that._

“You dropped me from five _fucking_ feet in the air,” she hissed at him, spitting out every syllable with anguish and venom. “My fucking _legs_ are broken!”

“Sorry, won’t do it again,” Claude assured her. “Marianne, come over here! I need you to heal her!”

“Oh, b-but I’m a mouse…” Marianne pointed out.

“You can walk and talk, so who’s to say you can’t still use magic?” Annette told her with an encouraging pat on the back. “Can’t hurt to give it a shot!”

With some vigorous encouragement and prodding from Annette, Marianne trudged over to Monica, knelt down, and laid her paws over her legs. A pale yellowish glow suffused them as fractured bones beneath her flesh slid painlessly back into place and glued themselves together.

Once the glow had faded, Monica stood up gingerly, tentatively testing her weight on her legs. “Ah… much better! You’re alright, Marionette.”

“Marianne,” Claude corrected, since he knew Marianne wouldn’t say anything about it.

“You’ve spent a lot of time with Edelgard since you were rescued from the Death Knight,” Dimitri said to her. “Were you down here looking for her, too?”

“Well, of course!” Monica smiled. Somehow, Claude noted, it was an oddly unsettling smile, one he half expected to be filled with razor-sharp, needlelike fangs. “I wasn’t going to let my beastie—er, _bestie—_ get hurt down here!”

A twinge of disquiet ran through Claude’s mind. “How’d you figure to look down here?”

“Oh, well, of course, I—” Monica paused. “I… _wasn’t_ looking down here. I went to Tomas to ask about secret passages, and the next thing I knew, I was down here… and a mouse.”

“Right. You said Tomas abducted and poisoned you,” Dimitri said, scowling. “What horrible manner of fiend is he, to have such evil lurking behind such a kindly facade? I had hoped after Jeritza that we would not have this problem again…”

Claude thought for a moment. Something still didn’t feel right. This whole situation, especially everything surrounding Monica, felt as fishy as a birthday feast for Flayn. Was he remembering incorrectly (everything was still so hazy) or had she been about to say a different name before she’d picked out Tomas?

“Are you sure it was him and not someone else?” he asked, not expecting an honest answer in the slightest. But, then again, the _way_ somebody lied could sometimes be just as revealing as the truth.

“He invited me into his study and gave me tea,” Monica said. “I was feeling a little paranoid—who _wouldn’t_ be—and refused to drink any of it. Then one of those blighted demonic insects lighted on my neck and…”

His memory jogged, Claude sidled over to the squashed remains of one of the insects lying on the floor. It had to be an inch long or more, not counting the long beak protruding from its face. Its iridescent carapace had been split open like the tail of a boiled lobster, revealing soft meat as black as pitch; spindly legs stood in the air at odd angles like dead trees; its long, transparent wings were ragged and bent. Its abdomen was completely transparent, completely empty, and shriveled nearly to nothing.

And there was a very small shard of glittering stone embedded in its ruined carapace between what little was left of its bulbous eyes. Was it part of a crest stone, like the ones embedded in the brows of Demonic Beasts?

“So you _already_ though Tomas was going to poison you when you went to him for help?” he asked Monica, furrowing his brow.

“I thought _anyone_ could poison me,” Monica said. “But, of course, you know what that’s like, right, Claude?” she added with a disarming smile.

He had to admit, he did. Ever since he’d been announced as the heir to House Riegan, he’d practically had to sleep with one eye open. Still, though… something wasn’t adding up.

“We can talk about this later,” Dimitri said. “Like I said before we all turned into mice, we need to head back to safety and alert the knights. This situation is too big for us to handle on our own.”

Claude stifled a chuckle. Dimitri glared at him.

“But poor Edel…” Monica muttered, eyes downcast. “She’s still out there… alone, afraid…”

“I doubt that,” Dimitri said. “Perhaps she is alone, but she is not the type to give into fear. Of her, I know that much.”

“Why don’t we put it to a vote?” Monica asked. “Whoever wants to head deeper into Abyss, raise your paw.” She raised her paw. No one else did. She looked from one mouse to the next, growing more dejected with each pair of eyes she met. _“Really?”_

Cornflower tentatively raised her paw.

“Well, that was pointless,” Dimitri said. “Come on, everyone. We’ve got a lot farther to go now that we’re so small, so we shouldn’t waste time here.”

“Wait, one more thing before we leave.” Claude ripped a strip of cloth from his amber cape and tied it around his waist to form a makeshift sash. “If we make clothes for ourselves, we’ll stand out from ordinary mice more easily. Otherwise, we won’t be able to get anyone’s attention short of yelling in their ear.”

Dimitri nodded. “Good thinking, Claude.” He hurried off to make himself his own blue cloak from his cape; Annette, Marianne, and Monica did the same with strips of black cloth from their uniforms.

“Have you ever seen a more stylish mischief of mice?” Claude asked them as they gathered around him. “Alright, Cornflower, lead the way.”

“Just one moment.” Dimitri headed for Claude’s clothes and burrowed into the bundle of fabric.

“Hey!” Claude shouted, rushing after him. “You can’t—Those are _my—”_

Dimitri emerged with Claude’s pocketknife, hefting it atop his shoulder. It was noticeably longer than he was tall and its handle was as thick as a tree truck in comparison to his tiny body, yet he carried it with ease. If there was one thing he was known for throughout the academy, it was his prodigious strength; this was the man his peers called the Boar Prince, and being a mouse didn’t change that.

Cornflower gasped at his display of strength, all but swooning over the prince.

“There,” he said. “Now at least _one_ of us is armed.”

Now that Dimitri was sufficiently dangerous, the six of them set off to where they’d came from. Though they were all retreating, having come no closer to finding Edelgard, Claude couldn’t help but think of this as a win for the good guys, if only in a small way. They’d uncovered a new method for the poison to find its target, found a new suspect—even if the source of the information was, well, _suspect_ in her own way—and found the legendary Abyss hidden in the depths of Garreg Mach.

Most importantly, no one had come to attack or imprison them even when they’d all been at their most vulnerable in the throes of their transformations, which meant that these insects had sought targets on their own. And while that was terrifying in its own right, it also meant that Tomas—or whoever the true mastermind was—might not have been aware yet of the four new mice he’d created. And so, in a way, Claude still had the upper hand… or, well, paw.

And that was good, because this was bigger than he’d expected. Perhaps Edelgard’s disappearance hadn’t been the end goal—but rather only the beginning of something much bigger.

Then again—none of that would matter if he didn’t make it out of here.

To lift everyone’s spirits as they retreated back to the surface, Annette began to sing another aimless little ditty. _“Rats… We’re rats… We’re the rats… We stalk at night, we prey at night…”_

It wasn’t her best work, in Claude’s opinion, but it was surprisingly catchy for something improvised on the spot.

Monica joined in, stumbling a half-step behind Annette’s improvised lyrics but doing her best to catch up. _“I’m the giant rat who makes all of the rules… Let’s see what trouble we can get ourselves into…”_

“It’s a shame we couldn’t see more of Abyss,” Claude said as the six of them retraced their steps and headed back toward the surface. “You and the rest of your people live down here, right?” he asked Cornflower. “Can you tell me what it’s like? Are there really humans living down here?”

“There were,” Cornflower said. “About a season ago, their numbers began to thin out. It was quite peaceful for us mousefolk, really, at first, but then…”

“…And the population of talking mice boomed, I’m guessing?” Claude asked. He wondered if Tomas had been using this place as a testing ground for his poison… and for new delivery methods. Three months of research had to have yielded some frightening results.

“Well…” Cornflower’s nose and whiskers twitched. “It _did_ coincide with the arrival of some very strange new mice. Strange… _violent_ new mice.”

“Thieves, murderers, and criminals,” Dimitri mused. “The supposed denizens of this place are a violent lot. I cannot imagine that being transformed into vermin has improved their dispositions.”

“If _they’re_ vermin, what are _we?”_ Claude shot back at him.

“Temporarily embarrassed humans.”

“They wear strange clothes, create black fire that burns cold in their paws, and tame rats the way humans tame horses.” There was a faraway, distant tone in Cornflower’s voice. “They sweep through our homes, kidnapping whomever they see fit, slaughtering anyone who raises a sword against them…”

“I’m sorry,” Annette said, resting a consoling paw on the mouse’s shoulder.

“But that sounds more like an invading army than a band of angry criminals,” Dimitri noted. “Strange…”

“You said they appeared a season ago? So about three months?” Claude asked. That placed the beginning of Tomas’ experiments at around the time of the Goddess’ Rite of Rebirth, when Professor Byleth had repelled thieves in the Holy Mausoleum. “Dimitri, wasn’t that around the time Teach and the Black Eagles ran into that Flame Emperor guy and the Death Knight?”

Dimitri nodded. “And just like Professor Jeritza and the Death Knight, it seems Tomas has a sinister alter ego lurking underground as well. Do you think all these things are connected?”

If it _was_ Tomas, Claude mentally added. He kept that remark to himself; if Monica was plotting something, he didn’t want to tip off that he didn’t trust her. Still, though—The rebellion of the Western Church, the attempted theft of the Sword of the Creator, Flayn and Monica’s kidnapping, Edelgard’s abduction, an army of mice slithering in the darkness under Garreg Mach… Was there a connection between all these things?

“I’m not sure,” Claude admitted. “But I can feel a hunch coming on…”

“Stand up straight,” Monica said. “That’ll fix it.”

Though he made sure not to show it, Claude still kept a watchful eye on her. Something wasn’t right here. Had Tomas transformed her, brought her down here, and simply left her unattended, or had she escaped from him? Why had those insects shown up so soon after she’d run into him? Had they been chasing her? Had she known?

A change in the air stung the tips of his whiskers. Something was coming this way.

Dimitri readied his giant knife, holding it out as though it were a lance, and slipped past Cornflower to take the lead. “There’s something up ahead. Can you feel it?”

Marianne nodded. “I can just about smell it. More mice…”

“Do you think they heard our singing?” Annette asked.

“We should sing louder,” Monica said. “Mice are afraid of rats! If we keep saying we’re rats, maybe they’ll run away! _Rats, we’re rats, we’re the—”_

“Hold your tongue,” Dimitri all but spat at her. “Annette, you and Marianne hang back and protect the others; I’ll draw out their forces.”

 _“Say no more!”_ a voice boomed from the shadows, gregarious as it was threatening. _“Consider us drawn out, pal!”_

The mouse that emerged from the shadows was so large that he could be easily mistaken for a rat, towering over even Dimitri. Gray fur hid scarred skin; matted locks of jet-black hair crowned his head. He was a mountain of a mouse; the only person Claude could compare him to was his classmate Raphael, who held the honor of being the tallest, widest, and beefiest student in the academy. This guy, proportionally speaking, gave him a run for his money.

In his wake was a cluster of about half a dozen much more average-sized mice. Most clutched wooden sticks that had been whittled and shaped into approximations of swords, spears, and axes; some, though, wielded weapons that looked disturbingly more like something one would find in an armory—miniature weapons for miniature paws, but no less sharp.

Claude drew the others closer. _“When Dimitri engages with the big one,”_ he whispered, _“we’ll split up and run for it, flanking their sides, and regroup behind them.”_

The lead mouse raised his paws like a seasoned brawler. “Sorry the welcome party’s late,” he said. “That’s me. I’m the welcome party. These guys, too, I guess. But mostly me.”

“And you are…” Monica asked, her paw slowly slipping toward the little leather satchel resting on Cornflower’s hip. The little leather satchel that held that mouse’s crude little scrap-metal utility knife…

“Glad you asked!” the mouse answered. Torchlight glinted off the short lengths of silver necklace chain wrapped around his knuckles. “You’re looking at the Diminutive King of Grappling, Balthus of the Ashen Wolves!”

Cornflower clutched at Claude’s arm “Th-The Ashen Wolves?!” she squeaked, terrified. Evidently, the very name was drenched in infamy.

Claude took the opportunity to slip his paw into her satchel and steal her knife, slipping it into his sash to keep it hidden. There was nothing else in the satchel but a scrap of parchment and a small wooden stick.

 _“Marianne, Monica, we’ll break off and run past their left flank,”_ he hissed. _“Annette, take Cornflower and break through their right flank. Run on all fours; it’s faster.”_ He was aware that being a mouse had its advantages. Mice were fast in proportion to their size, excellent swimmers, and champion jumpers and climbers. To put those attributes to use, it was all just a matter of throwing out everything he knew and letting his new body make its own decisions.

Dimitri lunged at Balthus, and at the instant the two of them clashed, Claude and the others split their party in half and flanked him and his cohorts. A burst of magic from the left and right—a flash of light from Marianne, a gust of wind from Annette—threw the mice into disarray.

Balthus’ cohorts were slow and sluggish; Claude figured they must have been transformed recently, since they all seemed so unaccustomed to being mice _._ One lunged at him; he tripped the mouse up, snatched the wooden sword from his hand, and tapped him on the head just hard enough to knock him out. “Thanks! _Dimitri, over here!”_

Belying his regal bearing, Dimitri fought on the battlefield with the fury and reckless abandon of a wild beast. He attacked Balthus with a savage, forceful swing of his knife; the sharp blade glanced off the chains wrapped around his foe’s knuckles and coughed up a shower of sparks as Balthus’ counterattack nearly knocked him off his feet. He pressed onward, though, ducking under a swing of the giant’s fist and cutting a deep gash in his side.

Balthus retreated, clutching at his side as blood stained his paw. “Could be worse…” A pale glow shrouded his paw; when he pulled his paw away, there was a bloodstain darkening his fur, but no wound. “But don’t count me out yet!”

His next blow only grazed Dimitri’s shoulder; taking advantage of the near miss, Dimitri broke off and barreled through the disorganized ranks of Balthus’ cohorts, scattering them with a mighty swing of his blade. When he returned to Claude’s side, he nodded approvingly at his purloined sword.

“We’ve wasted enough time here,” Dimitri said, panting from exertion, one paw pressed gingerly against his side where Balthus’ knuckles had left a blossoming bruise under his fur. His blue cloak hung from his shoulders. “No need to keep fighting.”

“Hey! Who said we were finished here?” Balthus shouted out, whirling around to face him. “Happy?” he called out.

“No, I wouldn’t say that I am,” Dimitri answered.

A rat slunk out from the shadows; sitting atop it was a pale mouse with a mane that was either scarlet or green. Seeing the giant beast she rode—or rather, catching its scent—overwhelmed Claude’s mind; the idea of running away sounded even more attractive now, even if it meant turning tail and running deeper into Abyss. Even Dimitri braced himself, as though unnerved by the beast’s very presence.

“No, _I’m_ Hapi,” Balthus’ cohort said. Unlike her counterpart, she spoke with a disaffected, disinterested air that masked a restrained frustration.

“You don’t _sound_ very happy,” Annette said.

Hapi rolled her eyes. “Oh, hey, haven’t heard _that_ one before. What do you want from me, Balthus?”

“I think we’re gonna need a bigger welcome party for these guys.”

“Fine.” She let out a long, loud, forlorn sigh. “Here you go.”

Balthus pumped his fists. “Perfect!”

A shout rang through the air, quickly reduced to a strangled gurgle. A flash in the corner of Claude’s eye caught his attention, whirling him around as though a fishhook had lodged itself in his brain and reeled him in.

Marianne had fallen to her knees, clutching her throat; Annette had rushed to her side. And with teeth bared, eyes wild, and black cloak fluttering, Monica had thrown herself at Claude. He threw up his arm over his chest to protect himself as she lunged toward him and felt a short, blunt length of frayed and well-gnawed wood rattle the bone itself in his forearm—

Monica stared down, dumbfounded, at what she’d probably assumed had been a knife when she’d grabbed it from Cornflower’s satchel. Of course, although she’d known there had been a knife in there, she hadn’t known about anything else, nor that Claude had gotten to the satchel before her…

As Dimitri swung his massive blade in retaliation, Monica leaped out of the way, tossing the useless stick aside.

Claude pulled Cornflower’s knife out of his sash. It was a crude, knobbly, nasty thing—no artistry, no craftsmanship—just a length of scrap steel with one edge slightly less dull than the other, with a strip of leather wrapped around the tang to form a makeshift grip. “Looking for this?” he asked, grinning.

“I should have known you’d show your true colors,” Dimitri spat. “You’re behind this, are you not?”

“You can’t even _see_ my true colors, you stupid vermin!” Monica spat in return, running a paw through her probably-crimson hair as if to demonstrate. “Now, as much as I’ve enjoyed hearing the meaningless conjecture of your puny little minds, we’re done here. Next time we meet, I’ll skin you all alive and make you into little coats!”

“There will _be_ no next time! I’ll have your head, von Ochs!” Dimitri snarled, lunging at her. Unarmed and defenseless, Monica beat a hasty retreat—but at the edge of the island of torchlight, her paws brushing against the shore of the sea of shadow, she skidded to a halt. The sound of dozens of skittering claws scratching against stone and a foul, musky stench filled the air as half a dozen feral rats emerged from the shadows in front of her, their eyes gleaming and shining. Dimitri had nearly caught up with her but halted at the sight of the horde, rattled.

The gleam in the rats’ eyes wasn’t natural—nor were the bridles tied around their snouts or the mice clad in black robes and faceless masks and veils riding atop them like mounted soldiers. Some carried silver forks and knitting needles like lances; others were unarmed.

It seemed this was the invading army Cornflower had spoken of. Sure enough, the mouse was shivering with fear, eyes locked on the line of mounted soldiers that had slipped out of the darkness.

Monica leaped onto the back of one of the rats, laughing. “Thanks for calling the cavalry, you witless worms!” she cackled. “Forward, troops! Rip and tear!”

“Okay, Hap,” Balthus said to his partner as the slavering vermin rushed onward. “Now send ‘em back…”

There was another flash of eyeshine in the darkness, followed by a panicked scream; a lithe mass of liquid shadow poured out onto the cavalry line, breaking their formation and scattering them to the winds.

It was an abyssal cat, a mangy, thin cat, a far cry from the plump and pampered cats of Garreg Mach—an old cat, battered and scarred, with ears worn down to notched nubs, whiskers ragged and uneven, the stark outlines of its ribs peeking through its skin, crosshatched lattices of scars strung across matted locks of gray fur—that loomed as large to a mischief of mice as any fearsome monster.

Claude normally had no problem with cats. But if rats were naturally terrifying to a mouse, then cats were something _beyond_ terrifying.

In the face of that terror, he did the only sensible thing—he grabbed Dimitri, called out to all the others to run, and bolted.

Cornflower pulled out ahead, scrabbling for the scrap of parchment in her satchel and unrolling it. “This way!” she cried out, leading the rest of the mice to a crack in the wall. One by one, they slipped through, the abyssal cat gaining on them with every step. As the last of them slipped through the wall into the adjacent corridor, the cat’s paw slithered into the hole behind them, its claws springing out and glistening.

Claude felt his paws slip against slick, wet stone. He and the others had ended up in what looked like an aqueduct of some kind—the hallways was filled with a giant river, with only a thin shoreline of damp stone on either side to walk on.

He sniffed the air and retched, struggling not to let his insides become his outsides. No, this wasn’t a river—it was a sewage tunnel. “Ugh… What an incredible smell we’ve discovered…”

The paw retreated, slipping back into the dark crevice. Balthus, like most of the mice, caught his breath. “Phew… Next time, try summoning something smaller and easier to run away from, Hap,” he gasped, his voice nearly drowned out by the roar of rushing water.

“It did its job, didn’t it, B?” his cohort shot back, equally winded.

“I’m sorry for bringing this misfortune upon us,” Marianne coughed, her paw clasped over her snout to block out the stench. She was still gingerly rubbing her throat where Monica had tried to stab her.

There was another flash of eyeshine in the dark; Claude stumbled back from the wall, slipping on the slick stone, as the abyssal cat’s mangy head squeezed its way through the crevice.

Dimitri grabbed him before he could fall. “What the hell— _How?”_

Annette threw up her paws in surrender. “N-Nice kitty! We’re not food!”

“Cats can squeeze into any opening small enough for their heads to fit through,” Claude said as the cat wormed its way through, its pinned-down ears springing up as its head cleared the hole. He glanced over his shoulder. “But they don’t like water…”

“Claude, that’s _sewage—”_ Dimitri said.

“As if we’ve got any pride left to lose! This way, everyone!” Claude shot back, throwing both himself and Dimitri into what dubiously qualified as ‘water.’ The cat’s claws just barely grazed his back as he fell through the air. The water slammed into him like a mallet to his ribs, cold enough to force the air from his lungs in a stream of bubbles. In an instant, the current swept him away.

* * *

Though the clouds began to break and the rays of sunlight beaming to the ground widened, brightening the grand old stone walls of Garreg Mach Monastery, the brightened air brought no brightness to the mood.

Well into the afternoon, Byleth searched for her students, scouring the monastery with just as much fervor as the Knights of Seiros were devoting to their search for Edelgard. It was fruitless; the rest of the Black Eagles seemed to have vanished as well.

“There must be some place we have not looked,” Sothis mused, floating beside her. “The catacombs, perhaps? That is where Flayn was taken. I wonder if the same culprits are behind this…”

Byleth took a deep breath. She typically didn’t feel any emotions very strongly, but right now, an unusually strong panic had gripped her. Her students were her responsibility. She’d protected them all on the battlefield thus far, no matter how dangerous the missions the church sent them on were, and yet here in the safety of this very monastery they had vanished. Anything could have happened to them. They could have all been killed already…

“Are you listening to me?” Sothis pouted. “You will not find the little ones by catastrophizing. Calm yourself.”

_“Professor! Professor Byleth!”_

Byleth whirled around, shocked and elated (as much as she could be) to hear a familiar voice ringing in her ears. Ferdinand skidded to a halt before her, crouching down and resting his hands on his knees as he struggled to catch his breath. Beads of sweat dotted his glistening forehead, his auburn hair falling lank over his brow; ashy black smears stained his hands. The rest of the Black Eagles lagged behind, each of them just as winded by the time they caught up. That was, the rest of the Black Eagles save for…

“Ah, we should have known _they_ would find _us,”_ Sothis sighed, relieved. “But the sleepy one and the loudmouth are missing. Oh, dear…”

“Professor…” Ferdinand choked on his ragged breaths. “Professor, we have discovered…”

Petra, far less exhausted than her peers, stepped forward and helped him up. “Professor, we are knowing where Edelgard and Bernadetta have been taken. However, we are having bad news as well.”

Hubert opened his mouth to elaborate, but Byleth cut him off. “Where are Caspar and Linhardt?” she asked the rest of the students.

There were a few shared uneasy glances between Ferdinand, Dorothea, Petra, and Hubert before Ferdinand slipped his hand into his jacket and withdrew it with two little grayish-brown mice resting in his palm. As surreal of an answer to Byleth’s question as it was, it was still a definitive enough answer.

“Unfortunately,” Hubert said, his voice grimmer than usual and eyes haunted, _“this_ is not the bad news.”

Byleth took the mice from Ferdinand; the two of them did not hesitate to climb onto her hand, their tiny claws tickling her skin. Telling which was who proved surprisingly easy, as Sothis demonstrated: “Look!” she told Byleth, pointing a finger at Linhardt and Caspar in turn. “This one has a little green mane, and this one has a patch of blue fur on his head!”

Byleth gave Caspar a gentle pat and scratched at the patch of pale blue fur crowning his head with the tip of her finger. _“Hey, cut it out!”_ he squeaked in protest, which confirmed that yes, he was indeed Caspar.

She let out a relieved sigh. “It could be worse,” she told the rest of her students, feeling her still and silent heart lighten. “What’s the bad news?”

_“Professor Byleth!”_

This time, the voice calling her name belonged to Seteth, and it was far less welcome to her ears. He strode up to her from across the courtyard, a grim look on his severe face. “There you are. You must see the Archbishop at once. I have more bad—” He paused. “Ah. You found the rest of your students, I see. Thank the Goddess. Er…” He knitted his eyebrows. “Aren’t you missing two more?”

Byleth offered him her mouse-covered hand. “Caspar and Linhardt are right here.”

Seteth looked down at the mice, his eyes widening and his lips pursing into a concerned frown. “Oh. Oh, dear. I was afraid of this,” he said with a sad shake of his head. Though clearly perturbed, he seemed much, _much_ less shocked to find two students transformed into rodents than one would expect.

“If I must be honest,” Sothis said, although nobody but Byleth could hear her, “it may be an improvement.” She put her hands on her hips. “I think they are much cuter that way.”

“Follow me, all of you,” Seteth said, turning around and beckoning Byleth and her remaining students to follow him. “Students, explain yourselves.”

As they hurried to Archbishop Rhea’s audience chamber, Hubert recounted what he and his classmates had discovered earlier that morning. Seteth nodded along, though he made a displeased face upon hearing about the various unsavory acts the class had engaged in. Byleth felt sorry for her students; when this was all over, Seteth wouldn’t turn a blind eye to thievery and violence committed outside of the battlefield and would surely have some severe punishments in mind.

“What happened to this Albus von Barlowe?” Seteth asked Hubert.

Hubert’s face was stony, but the corner of his mouth twitched upward. “He’s been fired.”

“That is… not as descriptive an answer as I was hoping for,” Seteth replied, disappointed. The tone of his voice was the same as when Byleth had told him she was “twenty-ish years old, maybe” and had been a mercenary for “ten years, I think” during her first performance review.

“There was an altercation after I had questioned him,” Hubert elaborated, wiping away a smudge of sweat and ash on his cheek, “and he started a fire. There were so many flammable tonics and tinctures in his storehouse that the shop went up like a tinderbox. We escaped. He didn’t.”

Sothis sniffed the air. “No wonder they smell of smoke.”

Seteth looked disappointed. “A shame. I would have preferred to question him myself. But I suppose it could not have been helped.” He shook his head. “Likely he immolated himself to avoid further questioning.”

Hubert nodded. “My sentiments exactly.”

As the group reached the doors to the audience chamber, Seteth gave the students a disciplinary scowl. “Students, you are excused,” he said, motioning to the Black Eagles with a dismissive wave of his hand. “Look carefully after each other.” He eyed the mice sitting in Byleth’s hand. “That includes those two. And Hubert—”

“Yes?” Hubert asked, matching Seteth's glower with one of his own.

“I have already warned you once to stay out of trouble and leave this to the professionals. Do not make me warn you a third time, or I will have you locked in your bedroom with guards posted outside your door until this peril has passed. Or perhaps longer.”

Hubert bowed curtly. “Yes, sir.”

Byleth slipped the mice into Petra’s waiting hand and watched her students leave down the staircase, wishing she could stay with them. Seteth eased the tall, oaken double doors open and ushered her inside.

The Archbishop’s audience chamber was a cavernous room, large enough to hold a grand audience for anything Rhea may have had to say, with a magnificent arched ceiling held up by fluted columns raised to dizzying heights and elegant ribbed buttresses forming an airy space overhead lit by six opulent chandeliers. Tall stained glass windows lined the walls, illuminating the room with brilliant rays of multicolored sunbeams cutting across the intricate patterns of colored marble tiles blanketing the floor.

Archbishop Rhea sat like a queen on a throne. A gown of white, nearly-translucent silk and vestments of deep navy blue and gleaming gold traced a body as perfect as a marble statue. In the sunlight, her golden headdress shone like a second sun in itself. Locks of pale seafoam-green hair spilled down her shoulders and back, framing skin as white as alabaster and a kind, almost motherly face. The full authority of the church seemed to radiate from her very skin to suffuse every corner of the room.

To Byleth’s surprise, Rhea already had an audience. Professors Hanneman and Manuela, the teachers of the Blue Lions and Golden Deer houses; Catherine and Alois, both Knights of Seiros and spearheads of the current search for Edelgard; and Shamir and Jeralt, mercenaries currently under the employ of the Church. They all formed an arc around Rhea, arms crossed, heads bowed, expressions grim.

“Such an ensemble has been gathered here…” Sothis mused, crossing her arms as though to match the intensity of Rhea’s audience. “All this for your lordling? I must admit, she is of _some_ importance…”

Byleth felt a pit form in her stomach as every eye in the room turned to her. The mood in the room was, in spite of the sunlight, gloomy and somber; Rhea wore a dismal, gloomy face.

Seteth relayed to her what the Black Eagles had discovered, and then repeated what everybody else in the room save for Byleth already knew.

 _“What?”_ Sothis gasped, shocked. “The other lordlings have gone missing as well?”

Rhea sat back on her dais, head bowed, hands folded in her lap. She seemed far, far older now than her rather young appearance suggested. “I will draft letters to Grand Duke Rufus, Duke Riegan, and other major nobles throughout Fódlan urging them to keep the faith and maintain order while the knights continue their search,” she said. “Seteth, bring me fifteen copyists and prepare our swiftest couriers. With any luck, we will have already found the missing children by the time the letters arrive.”

Seteth gave a deep bow. “It will be done, Lady Rhea,” he said, hurrying out of the audience chamber.

“Catherine, Alois, continue to search the monastery,” Rhea said. “Find an entrance into Abyss by any means necessary.”

The two knights bowed and departed as Seteth had.

“Shamir, Jeralt, keep a watchful eye on the dormitories. I want no students leaving their rooms tonight.”

Jeralt gave Rhea a perfunctory bow; Shamir barely nodded. The two of them followed the knights out of the chamber.

As he passed her by, Jeralt laid a warm, rough hand on Byleth’s shoulder. She could feel his calloused and scarred skin through her coat. A wan, weary smile lit his craggy face. “I’m glad your other students are okay, kiddo. Don’t forget to take care of yourself, too.”

Byleth nodded and laid her hand atop his. “Thank you, Father. You, too.”

Jeralt wrapped her up in a warm embrace, his scruffy skin tickling her cheek, then pulled away, and gave her another soothing pat on the shoulder. “And if you end up getting turned into a mouse, too…” He gave her a stern, fatherly look, his brow furrowing and the light in his eyes turning hard and fierce. “I’ll be very disappointed in you.”

Byleth wasn’t one to smile—Jeralt had remarked a few months back that she’d never shown much emotion until she’d started working here at the monastery—but she felt an unusual twitch of the muscles in her cheek that she assumed was probably one.

Jeralt smiled back. “See ya round, kiddo,” he said, following the others out of the room.

With no one else in the room, Rhea stood up from her seat and crossed the floor to meet Byleth next. Byleth met her eyes unflinchingly. She had a look on her face that was wistful, bordering on mournful; a small riddle of a smile that never managed to reach her eyes. It was the same face she wore whenever Byleth was around.

“In your letters,” Byleth asked, “are you going to say anything about…”

“Mice?” Rhea shook her head. “I hope I will not have to,” she admitted. “I sent a missive this morning to the Royal Academy of Sorcery asking them to send their foremost expert in transmutation and polymorphic magic to the monastery posthaste. It should reach them by nightfall tomorrow.”

“Should that not work out, I am sure there is nothing in the laws of the Kingdom, Alliance, or Empire saying their rulers _cannot_ be mice,” Sothis commented. “It will simply take some adjusting to.”

“Edelgard is—” Byleth blurted out before remembering that she did not need to speak aloud to respond to Sothis. _Edelgard is not going to spend the rest of her life as a mouse._

“I am simply saying, we must remain open to the possibility,” Sothis said. “Imagine if they make a tiny throne for her. And a little table for her to eat at while dining with nobles in her palace. She could drink her wine out of a thimble!”

“Yes, I know,” Rhea answered Byleth, oblivious to Sothis’ voice. “Edelgard is important to you.” She smiled. “I, too, hope for her swift and safe return. I… my bloodline and the Hresvelg family have always had close ties. She is important to me as well.”

“I’ll do whatever it takes to find her,” Byleth said, nodding.

Rhea shook her head. “No, my child. I want you to set a good example for your students and stay out of trouble. For now,” she said, clasping her soft, cold hands around Byleth’s, “allow Edelgard’s fate to rest in the hands of the Goddess.”

Byleth nodded, slipped her hand free, and left Rhea with a respectful bow.

“Ah, well, our work here is done,” Sothis said, yawning as Byleth descended the staircase to the main hall. “Now let us sleep and leave the work to the others. Surely the little ones will have been found by the time we wake up.”

Byleth didn’t respond.

Sothis frowned. “You _are_ going to do as Rhea asked you, are you not?”

Byleth shook her head.

Sothis’ face fell.

* * *

For Bernadetta, sleep was usually a welcome escape from the anxieties and pressures of the waking world. But though most nights she found sanctuary in slumber, she wasn’t immune to bad dreams; no matter how far away she was from home, her father could still follow her in spirit. Even here, even now.

When she woke up, jolted out of slumber by the rocking of the battered wooden wagon, the image ringing in her mind’s eye was that of her father looming over her, fist bared, knuckles bruised and bloody—(no, he’d never _hit_ her; the worst of the bruises she’d gotten from him were because of the ropes he would use to tie her down)—a crumpled body, bruised head to toe and curled up to fend off their assailant’s merciless blows, lying at his feet. It was a familiar dream, a recurring dream, a dream that left her wracked with guilt every time she woke from it.

At first, the body had belonged to the commoner boy who’d helped keep up the garden at the Varley estate. He had been Bernadetta’s first friend—gentle, trustworthy, gorgeous (from what little she remembered of his face)—until her father had discovered the two of them playing together. The boy had vanished the next day; she’d never seen him again, only heard rumors that he’d been thrashed within an inch of his life as punishment for daring to lay a filthy commoner hand on the daughter of Count Varley.

Since she’d come to Garreg Mach, the dream had changed. Sometimes it was still the boy; sometimes, though, it was the second friend she’d ever made—her classmate, Dorothea Arnault, herself a commoner and thus deemed unworthy of Bernadetta’s company. And although Dorothea had assured her on plenty of occasions that she had dealt with much nastier men than Bernadetta’s father during her time with the opera company, and although Bernadetta had seen with her own eyes that Dorothea could reduce any man who stood against her to a charred corpse with a magic spell, in her dreams, none of that mattered. In these dreams, her father was invincible and his word was law.

This time, silly as it sounded, the battered and broken body had been Edelgard’s.

As the wagon came to a halt just on the edge of the camp, Bernadetta stirred from her restless sleep, yawning, and realized that somehow, she’d ended up resting her head on Edelgard’s shoulder. Embarrassed, she pulled herself away, only for Edelgard to hold her back and steady her.

Her mind and heart raced. She wasn’t in trouble, was she?

“Quite a battle, wasn’t it?” Edelgard asked wryly. “I can’t begrudge you for needing to rest. You continue to impress me, though; I never would have thought we would work so well together.”

Recalling the feel of Edelgard’s arm around her waist and her steadying grip, Bernadetta felt a little more at ease. That moment of almost _calm_ in the heat of battle had been almost like something out of an adventure novel… or a romance novel…

Bernadetta felt an unwelcome warmth rush to her cheeks, and then to the rest of her body. _Romance_ novel? What was she _thinking?_

“Th-Thanks, u-um… uh… thank you ma’am,” she stammered lamely.

Edelgard let out a shocked yelp as a tiny pink snout wormed its way under her arm and one of the rescued pups rested its mostly-hairless pink head on her lap. She froze, grimacing, as the pup’s tiny pink ears wiggled.

Matthias glanced at her and smiled. “Aw, you made a friend, Edelgard!”

To say the least, Edelgard didn’t seem very happy to have made a new friend. In fact, she seemed to be wondering how best to get the thing as far away from her as possible. “Does it… have a name?” she asked, feigning interest.

Matthias shrugged. “They don’t usually get names until about two weeks old. Any sooner is just setting yourself up for disappointment. You see, pups can’t really do anything besides sit around and need food until then. When do humans name their pups?”

“Soon as we’re born,” Wesper answered from the driver’s seat. “Why don’t you name it ‘Jerry,’ Lady Edelgard?”

Edelgard looked down at the pup and quickly looked away as though she’d stared directly into the sun. _“Excuse_ me?”

“It looks like a Jerry.”

“I’ll, er… I’ll leave that to its mother,” she said, mustering the courage to grab the pup, holding it the way one would hold a slab of long-past-spoiled meat and setting it at arm’s length. Bernadetta was amazed that she’d been so driven to save these pups from Myson and his raiders, considering how visceral her disgust for them seemed to be.

As the wagon came to a stop, Edelgard pulled Bernadetta to her feet and helped her disembark, seeming quite pleased with herself as the mice milling around the ramshackle collection of tents and huts began to crowd around the wagon, a susurrus of murmurs hissing through the air.

“Allay your fears,” Edelgard announced, raising her voice. “Your children are safe and sound, every last one of them!” There was _almost_ a slight hint of a puzzling emotional tremor in her voice.

Edelgard’s face fell, though, when the mice proved apathetic at best about their children; all anyone in the camp wanted to do, it seemed, was ask her how many raiders she’d slain, and the questions only grew louder and more intense when Matthias let slip that she’d fought the Plague Rat yet again and lived to tell of it.

Visibly frustrated, she grabbed Bernadetta and pulled her out of the crowd while Matthias distracted them by spinning up a grand, epic tale of valor.

“Ridiculous,” Edelgard spat once she’d cleared the crowd. “We risked our lives to bring their children back safe and sound and they couldn’t care less. What ingrates! Isn’t that absurd, Bernadetta?”

Bernadetta reflexively nodded in agreement, even though she had no idea why Edelgard felt so strongly about this. Her guess as to why Edelgard was so invested in the pups’ well-being was as good as any.

“We may have failed to collect any meaningful intelligence about our enemies’ plans and capabilities,” Edelgard huffed, fuming, “but at least we brought their children back. And yet they don’t care.” She was right; the mouse pups were still all sitting in the wagon where they’d been left. When one of the mice finally ventured into the wagon and swept up a few of the pups in her arms, it was less like a tearful reunion between mother and children than it was like a merchant unloading supplies.

“Told ya,” Zeke said, sidling between the two of them. “Wasn’t a big deal. We can always make more.” He shrugged. “I made a few more while you were gone, even.”

Edelgard made a face. Bernadetta, equally loath to be privy to his reproductive exploits, nervously sidled away from him.

“Aw, lighten up! ‘S like you two were raised in a _cage_ all your lives.” Zeke narrowed his eyes. “Say, you two weren’t, uh… y’ weren’t _pet_ mice, were ya? Like, pets for _humans?”_

“Those pups are your _progeny,”_ Edelgard said. “How can you care so little about them?”

“Well, they’re not _my_ progeny,” Zeke retorted. He scratched his head. “Er… maybe some of ‘em are. Hard t’ keep track. Anyway, look. Most ‘a those pups would’ve died anyway. If the raiders wanna take a few, well, as long as they ain’t hurtin’ _us…”_

“You call yourselves fathers and mothers?”

Zeke raised his paws. “No need t’ get snippy! Just sayin’. Mattie n’ I, we had close to twenty brothers and sisters between the two of our litters, all of ‘em dead from sickness or eaten by rats ‘fore they were two full months old. That’s just how it works. That’s how it works for _everyone._ Pups are cheap. Who cares if ya lose a few?”

While Zeke spoke, Bernadetta could see Edelgard’s frustration mounting, her teeth grinding, her nose wrinkling, her brow furrowing, her fists clenching. There was a quiet fury rattling her petite, mousy frame the likes of which Bernadetta couldn’t recall ever seeing in her. It wasn’t the kind of fury she demonstrated on the battlefield, but rather a sort of restrained, impotent rage, like a toothless lion pawing at the bars of its cage.

“Look,” he said, “I’m not sayin’ babies aren’t _important._ They’re li’l bundles of joy, future adults, emergency food sources—”

“E-Excuse me?”

“Well, how big was _your_ litter, then?”

“I’m an only child,” Edelgard replied, a menacing tremor leaking into her otherwise-level voice.

“Oh.” Zeke nodded slowly, almost sagely. _“Oh,_ I get it. The rest of ‘em died, huh?” He reached out to lay a paw on her shoulder. “Sorry, Rusty. Had no idea it’d be a sore spot—”

Edelgard’s eyes flashed. With a swipe of her paw, she knocked Zeke’s aside. “Do not _touch_ me!” she barked, and with a furious swirl of her ragged cloak, she turned her back on him and stormed off.

Zeke shook his head. “Wherever you two come from,” he told Bernadetta, “ya got a _weird_ culture goin’ on.”

“I-I, uh, I guess we do,” Bernadetta replied, mustering a nervous little laugh.

A paw gripped her from the shoulder. _“You there!”_ a mouse called out to her, tugging on her cloak. _“Is it true? Did you shoot out the Plague Rat’s eyes?”_

Bernadetta turned around and found herself faced with a crowd of mice all staring her down with beady black eyes.

_“Did you really blind him?”_

_“Did the arrows really go all the way through and poke out the back of his head?”_

_“Did you kill him? Is he dead?”_

_“I heard you shot four arrows at once! Can you show me how to do that?”_

_“Did you shoot out one after the other, or both at once?”_

“U-Uh… Um…” Bernadetta stepped back, clutching her tail in her paws. Her heart leaped in her chest. The cacophony was so loud that she could hardly hear herself think; it felt as though there were strings all over her tugging her around, puppeteering her body. She could hardly even breathe. “It—It’s r-really nothing special… I-I had help…”

Zeke looked down at her. “You shot the Plague Rat in the eyes? Damn! You should be givin’ us lessons!”

“W-Well, I mean…” Bernadetta whirled around and ran after Edelgard. _“Edelgard, wait up!”_

She hurried through the camp, panting for breath, and didn’t stop until she’d slipped into a little tent with proper walls. A nice, secluded little place from the rest of the camp and all those needy mice with all their fawning questions.

As chance would have it, Edelgard was already there, poring over scraps of parchment littering a rough wooden table. It took Bernadetta a second to realize that this was Matthias’ tent.

“Edelgard?”

Edelgard stiffened and whirled around as though guilty of being caught somewhere she didn’t belong (a sentiment Bernadetta felt almost constantly). “Ah. Bernadetta. It’s only you.” She turned back to her work. “I thought Matthias might have a map around here.”

“A map? For what?”

“To get out of this place, of course.” Edelgard continued to scavenge through Matthias’ belongings. “We’ve wasted enough time here.” There was an odd emphasis on _wasted._

“Can I help?”

“By all means. Many hands make light work.”

Bernadetta joined her, trying hard to ignore anything that didn’t look like a map, like letters and drawings. It felt wrong to be invading Matthias’ privacy like this, but if Edelgard said it was the right thing to do…

As hard as she tried to resist the urge to snoop, Bernadetta found her attention grabbed by one of the scraps of parchment. There was a figure drawn on it in ink. Fine, unsteady brushstrokes formed the shape of a mouse with a long mane of hair and an ornate axe clasped in its paws. She glanced up from the drawing to Edelgard, then looked back to the drawing. It could have been a perfect match.

“Did you find something?” Edelgard asked, her tone sharp.

“Oh, u-uh, um… n-nothing important, I-I guess…” Bernadetta stammered.

Edelgard looked at the drawing and frowned, a puzzled expression on her face. “…Is _that_ what I look like?” she asked, furrowing her brow.

“No, you’re much prettier,” Bernadetta blurted out.

“Hmm. I wonder if I should be flattered.” Edelgard went back to her work. Whatever high spirits she’d had before returning to camp had quickly vanished, replaced with a tense, sour attitude.

Bernadetta gave the drawing another passing glance before setting it aside. There were some strange, yet familiar details on it—she realized that they were the ornaments, embroidered patterns, epaulets from Edelgard’s uniform. This mouse even had a half-cape draped over one shoulder. That was odd. Had Matthias drawn this? How could he have known what Edelgard’s uniform looked like? Maybe there really _was_ a prophecy behind all this.

“We have to hurry, Bernadetta,” Edelgard snapped, and in her ensuing panic Bernadetta all but threw the drawing away.

“Right. Right, right. Got it. So—U-Um, I mean, I regret, uh—”

“If you don’t know what to say, try not saying anything at all.” She let out a frustrated sigh and shook her head. “Don’t tell me all these mice have this place _memorized.”_

“Okay, I won’t.”

Soon enough, Edelgard and Bernadetta had sorted through all the papers on Matthias’ desk to no avail. “It’s no wonder these mice can’t stand up to Myson and his raiders,” Edelgard said. “No maps, no schematics, no battle plans. They have no sense of tactics, no sense of their enemy’s movements. They should have been slaughtered to a man a long time ago. Or to a mouse, I suppose.”

“So if they _had_ a map, and we took it, they’d be slaughtered?” Bernadetta asked.

“We must have overlooked something,” Edelgard said.

Bernadetta glanced around the tent for anything that might look like a map. Something was strange, now that Edelgard mentioned it—

From the outside, the tent had one of its sides flush against the wall, but from the inside, all four sides were draped in ragged swatches of canvas with empty space behind them.

Bernadetta crept to the far side of the tent and brushed the canvas curtain aside, revealing a little alcove just like the room Matthias had shown them last night. A guttering matchstick torch, nearly burned down to nothing, lit the alcove up.

Inside was a mound of blankets, a ladder leaning against the wall leading to a hole in the ceiling, and a jagged shard of mirror propped up against the rough stone wall. For the first time, Bernadetta found herself staring into her own eyes and seeing for herself what she looked like.

She reached up and brushed her whiskers and watched her reflection do the same. She twitched her little pink nose and watched her reflection’s nose twitch in turn, then watched her ears flick back and forth. It was so surreal, watching something that _wasn’t_ her mimic her so closely. She knew she was a mouse and she knew that her eyes weren’t playing tricks on her (except that since she couldn’t see purple, her hair looked bluish now), and she’d thought she’d gotten used to seeing such a mousy face over the past few days, but it still felt unsettling and _wrong_ deep in her gut to see it with her own eyes.

Unsettling and wrong, but… sort of cute, too, in a way.

Edelgard’s reflection slipped past the frame of the mirror to join hers. Her eyes widened, her face twisting into a grimace. For an instant, she looked almost afraid. “Is that… what I look like?” she asked quietly, somberly, watching in disbelief as her reflection’s mouth moved in time with hers.

Bernadetta nodded.

Edelgard closed her eyes and held her paw to her forehead. “I suppose it could be worse.”

“You’re pretty cute, actually,” Bernadetta said before she could stop herself. “F-For a mouse, I mean. A-And that doesn’t mean you have to like it—If you hate being a mouse, that’s fine, I-I’m just saying—”

“I appreciate the compliment,” Edelgard said, sounding as though she didn’t appreciate it at all.

“I know you don’t like mice or rats,” Bernadetta went on, still utterly failing to stop herself, “so this must be a real nightmare for you—”

“That’s enough.” Edelgard tore her attention away from the mirror and let out a deep sigh. “Mice aren’t so bad. I’ve started getting used to them. It’s just… _visceral.”_

“I mean, I _like_ mice, or at least I don’t _hate_ them,” Bernadetta said, “and it’s… it’s still hard.”

“But I digress. I don’t see anything of value in here,” Edelgard said, her gaze brushing past the mirror and lingering on the ladder. “Though it seems Matthias has an upstairs…”

 _“Um, excuse me,”_ Matthias asked, slipping between the two of them and resting his paws on their shoulders, _“but what’re you doing in my room?”_

Bernadetta yelped and tore herself away from him, nearly leaping high enough to crack her skull on the ceiling. Rattled, Edelgard pulled herself free.

“Ah, Matthias. No, excuse _us,”_ Edelgard said, maintaining a diplomatic composure. “We were in your tent looking for a map of this area and wandered in here by mistake.” She bowed curtly. “We meant not to intrude.”

So _that_ was what an imperial princess’ apology sounded like. Bernadetta studied it. _Excuse me_ and _I meant not to whatever_ instead of _I’m sorry._ Maybe it was just that simple. “Yes,” she chimed in, “we’re very, um… E-Excuse us!”

“Oh, you wanted a map?” Matthias asked.

“Yes. It’s nothing personal,” Edelgard said, “just that—”

“For tactics and stuff, right?” His eyes lit up. “Of course! Zeke’s the one who has the map. Me, I’ve got this place memorized,” he said, tapping on his forehead, “but he gets lost going in a straight line. Hang on, I’ll go get him. Feel free to wait around wherever you’d like, except, uh, I’d like you to not go through my stuff, y’know, although with you being the savior and all, I can’t really do anything to stop you if you want to. So I’m just suggesting.”

“We get it. We’ll leave,” Bernadetta said. She wondered if Matthias was embarrassed about that drawing of Edelgard. She knew _she_ would be. “Excuse us for the regrettable trouble, Matthias.”

“No, no, you two can stay here,” Matthias insisted, “just stay put. If you want to, I mean.”

As the mouse scurried out of the tent, Edelgard patted Bernadetta on the shoulder. “That was a very good statement, Bernadetta. Dare I say, you are getting the hang of apologizing like an authority.”

“Really?”

“Yes. Diplomatic, polite, and assertive. You’ve almost got it. Think about it like this—A proper apology is a show of wisdom, not weakness. If you do it right, the person you’re apologizing to will think you stronger for it.”

“Wow. Really?”

Edelgard nodded. As terse and snippy as she’d seemed earlier, she seemed to be warming up again. “The proper mindset is important. Instead of apologizing to assuage one’s anger, you should be apologizing to ensure one’s support and loyalty.” Edelgard gestured lazily with her paw. “Take Matthias, for example. As he said, I am the chosen savior of these people, and if I wished to continue pawing through his belongings, he wouldn’t be able to stop me. However, by apologizing to him and heeding his wishes, I have further ensured that he will be of help to us.”

“So… you apologize to people so you can use them.” Bernadetta felt something twist inside her stomach—an uneasy feeling in her gut.

“It isn’t so simple. There’s nuance to it. A tactical apology can still be earnest, and an earnest apology can still be employed for ulterior reasons. You cannot so easily divide the world into those who wish you well and those who mean you harm.”

Matthias poked his head back in the tent. “Oh, one more thing, Edelgard. Uh… thanks for your help back there.” With that, he vanished.

As she and Bernadetta waited for Matthias to return, Edelgard crossed her arms and idly twiddled a lock of her mane in her fingers, her mood souring once again. Bernadetta kept noticing her glancing backward at the mirror, hastily averting her gaze every time her eyes met her reflection’s eyes.

Edelgard reached up, then winced and lowered her arm, pressing her palm into the injury she’d sustained in her shoulder that morning. Though Wesper had closed the wound and knitted the muscle back together, he was (of his own admission) far less adept with healing magic than with other spells; the wound still ached, it seemed, and made her right arm hard to use.

“Bernadetta?” she asked. “May I ask something of you?”

Taken aback, Bernadetta could only stammer, “Um, c-certainly, Your Highness.”

“My hair is in a frightful state. If you would be so kind as to brush it…” Edelgard looked down as though embarrassed.

“I-I don’t have a brush or a comb, though…”

“Your claws will suffice,” she said, still looking away, spitting out the words as though she couldn’t wait to be rid of them.

“Um…” Bernadetta didn’t know what to do. The last few times she’d tried to pet Edelgard, it had seemed like she’d hated it, so why was she asking for it now? Was it some sort of trick or prank?

“Please.”

Then again, if her princess was asking for it, then how could she refuse?

With a deep breath to quell her nerves, Bernadetta slipped behind Edelgard and slipped her fingers into her mane, butterflies dancing in her stomach. She began to run her paws downward, letting white hair flow between her fingertips like quicksilver.

“Hair like this needs to be taken care of,” Edelgard said as Bernadetta set to work. “Few people know this about colorless hair: it’s very brittle and fragile.”

Bernadetta’s paw came to a dead stop as she met a hard knot in Edelgard’s hair. Edelgard winced. “S—Whoops.”

“A tangle? Only to be expected. Don’t worry. Ease your fingers through it. Slowly— _slowly._ Think of it as untying a knot.”

With Edelgard’s reassurance, she kept working her way through the tangles and knots. Edelgard sighed and relaxed, bowing her head. “Not bad,” she murmured.

“I’m doing okay?” Bernadetta’s heart leaped.

Edelgard nodded. “Very good. Now if only something could be done about these vexing flyaways,” she added, hefting a long lock of her hair in her paw and brushing the wispy, frizzy strands with her thumb. “I don’t suppose these mice care much for conditioner, but rosemary oil would work wonders for this. You don’t put much effort into your hair, do you, Bernadetta?”

“No,” Bernadetta answered. “Um—I-I mean, no, but I can start!”

Edelgard shrugged. “To each their own. I suppose your father forced all manner of hair care upon you in his quest for the perfect brood mare.”

Bernadetta nodded. More than once back at home she’d entertained the notion of cutting it all off just to spite him, although _entertain_ the notion was all she’d had the courage to do.

“Ah, but the way it feels once you’ve washed your hair and combed it and treated it with lavender oil and styled it however you choose…” Edelgard sighed. “I’m not sure there’s a greater earthly pleasure in the world.”

“I guess so.”

“It’s a matter of choice, I suppose. Sometimes I feel as though my hair is the only part of my body I can truly control…” she mused as Bernadetta kept working.

The more Bernadetta got used to it, the more relaxing it felt to work through Edelgard’s mane. She’d never thought the princess could be so soft, both literally and figuratively.

“Tell me, Bernadetta, does it itch?”

“Does what?”

“All this fur.” Bristling, Edelgard reached up with her uninjured arm and scratched absentmindedly at the base of her ear. It twitched and wiggled in response. “Subtle, yet so omnipresent it’s almost impossible to notice except in its absence… I think I have newfound sympathy for cats, dogs, and all manner of furry creature.”

“Do you want me to—”

“No! No, no, I’ve got it,” Edelgard hastily insisted, as though embarrassed. She reached for her other ear, but found her reach just slightly lacking. The other ear flicked needily. “Er… Actually, I suppose… if it isn’t too much trouble…”

Bernadetta’s heart skipped a beat. “I-I guess… if it’s okay…” She began to gently scratch behind Edelgard’s ear. It was soft and fuzzy with an almost felt-like texture and twitched eagerly with every scratch and stroke of Bernadetta’s thumb across its velvety surface.

With a deep, relieved sigh, Edelgard slumped into her arms, resting her head on her shoulder. “Ah, perfect. How fortunate that you are down here with me, Bernadetta… I think I’d be too embarrassed to ask anyone else.”

“W-What is it about _me?”_

“You’re known for your active imagination.” Edelgard rubbed her cheek against Bernadetta’s shoulder. The tips of her whiskers brushed against hers with a gentle, electric tingle. “Should you tell anyone about this, no one will ever believe you.”

“Oh.”

“I could trust you with any number of secrets. ‘That Bernie sure does like to make up wild stories,’ they would say…” Edelgard yawned. “Oh, this is heavenly…”

Bernadetta felt a tingle run down her spine all the way to the tip of her tail as Edelgard slipped an arm around her and began to lightly scratch at the nape of her neck. Like Edelgard had said, there _was_ a sort of all-over itch, something so omnipresent that she couldn’t notice it at all until it went away.

She closed her eyes. Time seemed to stretch on forever. Being pet and brushed and pampered felt so good…

 _“I can come back later if I’m interrupting anything,”_ Matthias squeaked.

Bernadetta’s eyes flew open and she all but shoved Edelgard away in her haste, clutching her cloak tighter around her shoulders as though she’d been caught doing something obscene. Matthias was standing in the tent with a roll of old brown parchment clutched in his paws and his older brother looming at his side.

“No, no, we were—” Edelgard self-consciously fiddled with her cloak. “We were just finishing up, weren’t we, Bernadetta?”

“No, no, I can come back and give you a few more minutes—”

“No, that’s fine.”

Matthias shrugged. “Okay. Here’s the map.” He unrolled the parchment and laid it out out flat on his table.

“Y’know,” Zeke said, “there’s nothin’ embarrassing about some good ol’ fashioned grooming—”

“The map, Matthias,” Edelgard reminded him, rapping her claws testily on the table.

Bernadetta and Edelgard peered over his shoulder at it. It wasn’t like any map Bernadetta had ever seen before. Then again, it wasn’t mapping out the shapes of continents and islands and tracing the squiggly paths of borders along rivers and mountain ranges. This was a map of a place built by humans, blown up to the size of a small country to its tiny inhabitants. The borders were shaped by the walls of Garreg Mach, and within them was a labyrinthine network of roads and tunnels marked liberally with notes on secret passages, cracks in the walls big enough to slip through, locations of other camps (most of them X’ed out), and labels such as _Here there be cats_ and _To surface—don’t use._ Very few passages to the surface didn’t have Xes through them or little skulls drawn around them. Near the center of the map, there was a little circle with _You are here_ written in tiny letters next to it.

“So, you human folks call this place Abyss or whatever,” Matthias said, “but we mousefolk call it the Lair of Wolves, on account of the Ashen Wolves living here.” He pointed to a corner of the map.

“Haven’t heard from ‘em in a while,” Zeke said. “They sorta vanished like a season ago.”

“One of your mouse cities?” Edelgard asked.

“No, that was a human village.” Matthias said. “Nasty humans, too. Hated mice. Good riddance—No offense. Anyway, _we_ had cities here, here, and here once upon a time.” He tapped on several points across the map. “After the End, we retreated from the surface; they were all we had left. Then things sorta slowly fell apart. This one right here, New Mouseburg, ended up with fifteen governors, and they all claimed to be the real governor and kept passing laws making supporting the other governors illegal. Eventually supporting _any_ leader became illegal. Somehow, it’s doing the best out of the three of ‘em. West Mousebrook over here by the river—” He tapped on a sewage canal— “These guys ended up cannibals.”

“An’ we mean _all the time_ cannibals, not _sometimes_ cannibals,” Zeke said.

“S- _Sometimes_ cannibals?” Bernadetta parroted.

“Get to the point,” Edelgard muttered testily.

“And over here you’ve got South Mousehaven, which despite its name, isn’t such a great haven for mice,” Matthias said. “The raiders wiped it off the map. Except for this one. All the other maps, you won’t find it, but this one? Yeah.” He chuckled. “That’s a little mouse humor. You probably don’t think it’s funny because you used to be human.”

“You used to be _human?”_ Zeke asked, his eye wide with bewilderment as he stared at Edelgard and Bernadetta. Matthias cringed, realizing what he’d let slip out.

Edelgard gritted her teeth. “We didn’t _‘used to be human,’_ we _are_ human.”

“Awful small n’ fuzzy for a human.”

 _“Temporarily embarrassed_ humans.”

Zeke rolled his eye. “Whatever ya say, Rusty.”

“Ahem.” Matthias gave Zeke an irritated, impotent glare, the kind uniquely associated with little brothers who were being humiliated by their older siblings. “Anyway, the raiders sort of set up camp in what’s left of South Mousehaven, I think.”

There was a spark in Edelgard’s eyes erasing how irritable Zeke’s attitude had made her. She leaned in and tapped excitedly on the map where Mousehaven was. “So this is the base of operations for those who slither in the dark?”

“That’s a weird name for them, but sure.” Matthias shrugged. “More descriptive than ‘raiders,’ I guess, but still. I was thinking of calling ‘em craven, horrible, underground dastards. Or chuds, for short. Those who slither in the dark is like… _Twsitd,_ and how do you even pronounce that? That’s a word that looks wrong backwards _and_ forwards.”

“I’m fine with calling them chuds,” Bernadetta said.

Edelgard shook her head. “Hubert and I often call them ‘slitherers,’ but for now, let’s just stick with ‘raiders.’ Anyway, look at this.” She traced a path across one of the winding roads across the map, skipping along a line denoting a mouse-sized tunnel under the east wall of the monastery. “This passage leads just beyond walls. If you take your people through it, you’ll all be free.”

“Uh, yeah, we _know_ that, Rust,” Zeke said defensively. “We ain’t _morons._ Just that, uh, there’s the little problem of Mousehaven being there. And all those chuds.”

“Raiders. And that brings me to my next point—you’re going to have to crush their stronghold and retake the city.”

Zeke scowled.“Yeah, that’s, uh… kinda obviously why we haven’t done it yet. But I guess Miss Temporarily Embarrassed Human knows best…”

“If you had a more effective fighting force, you could approach the city from the east and west. It’s a classic pincer movement. Divide their offensive force while taxing their defensive force in multiple points of ingress. What sort of fortifications are we talking about? Walls? Fences? Sharp spikes…”

Bernadetta listened with awe as Edelgard interrogated Matthias and devised battle strategies. Eventually, Matthias flipped the map over and started scribbling notes, enraptured. This was Edelgard at her best—intelligent, charismatic, cunning…

“…That is, of course, what I would do if I had more than a dozen peasants with sharpened sticks at my disposal,” Edelgard concluded, pausing to catch her breath. “Did you get all of that? Do you need me to repeat myself?”

Matthias nodded vigorously. “Got it!”

Zeke crossed his arms. “I dunno. Seems like a long shot, Rusty…”

Bernadetta and Matthias both let out a surprised shout as Edelgard’s paws slammed on the table. “My name is _not_ ‘Rusty!’” she snapped at Zeke. “Nor is it ‘Rust,’ or ‘Rustbelt,’ or ‘Von Rustbelt!’ My name is _Edelgard von Hresvelg,_ heir to Emperor Ionius IX of the Adrestian Empire, and I expect you to call me by it, Ezekiel!”

“Oh, we got _royalty_ on our paws here?” Zeke made a deep, mocking bow. “My apologies, Your Grand Royal Mouse-Savior Highness. Lemme just put _you_ in charge, Your Human Majesty! ‘Cuz you humans have got such big heads and such big brains—”

Matthias grabbed Zeke by the arm. “Okay, okay, w-we’re done here! Hey, Zeke, why don’t we, uh, just—M-Maybe let’s check and make sure all those pups got to the right mothers?” he stammered as he pulled his brother out of the tent with all his might. Zeke shared a vicious glare with Edelgard as he vanished behind the ragged canvas curtain.

When the coast was clear, Edelgard slumped her shoulders and let out a heavy, frustrated sigh. “I try to help them, and _this_ is what I get. I rescue their _children—”_ She clenched her fists, then forced herself to relax.

“Are you okay?” Bernadetta asked.

“I shouldn’t have snapped at him like that,” Edelgard said, cradling her head in her paws. “I feel so immature…”

Bernadetta wished she could say she’d have done the same thing in Edelgard’s situation, but knew in her heart that if someone kept calling _her_ by the wrong name, she’d just start going by that name to make things easier.

“I-I mean, _he_ was the one calling you names,” she told Edelgard. “I guess he must really have something against humans, huh?”

“I can’t see why he _wouldn’t._ Mice and humans aren’t known for cohabitating peacefully. Still, though, after we risked our lives, _wasted_ our morning trying to help these _vermin,_ only for—” Edelgard shook her head vigorously, as though trying to rid herself of a troubling thought. “If my father had had the strength to do for me what I did for those squirming, mewling maggots, I would never have been able to thank him enough! But do _we_ get a single word of gratitude from anyone but Matthias? Their parents?”

Bernadetta slowly backed away. “Um… i-is something wrong? Besides the name thing?”

Edelgard took deep breaths, trying to calm herself. “I couldn’t help myself,” she muttered. “I couldn’t let it happen again, I couldn’t let it happen to _them.”_ She clutched at her wounded shoulder, sinking to her knees. “And they don’t care. _They don’t care…”_

Bernadetta knelt beside her. “L-Lady Edelgard, can I… help?” she asked, tentatively reaching out to her.

Edelgard shook her head, but took Bernadetta’s paw anyway. “It’s alright. I simply lost my composure. Sometimes I… I seem to have trouble being myself down here. Eagles make for poor mice.”

“I mean… it’s not wrong to expect some gratitude, right?” Bernadetta shrugged. “Especially since we nearly died and everything. You really did care about those—”

Everything suddenly fell into place for her; Edelgard’s tense and irritable attitude made sense. Edelgard had said that morning that she’d been mistreated as a child. Bernadetta had assumed that she’d just been lying to make her feel better, because who in the world would be evil or foolish enough to abuse _the princess of the Adrestian Empire?_ But…

“Were you, um…” Bernadetta swallowed a lump in her throat. “Ever, um, kidnapped as a child? Never mind! Forget I asked! O-Of course you weren’t—I mean—You couldn’t have…”

Edelgard’s grip on her paw tightened, seemingly driving the air from her lungs and silencing her. Her pale eyes were downcast, her face glum.

“I suppose it’s only fair that I tell you my story now,” she said, “since I’d coaxed yours out of you earlier.”

“U-Uh-huh,” Bernadetta mumbled shakily, not sure at all how she was supposed to respond.

Edelgard took a deep breath, steadying her shaking voice. “I was perhaps eight or nine years old at the time of the Insurrection of the Seven. You’ve read about it, no?”

Bernadetta nodded. That was when the leaders of the six major noble houses of Adrestia, including her own, had wrested authority from the Emperor. She’d never really thought about it, let alone asked her father about it—she only knew what she’d learned in school.

 _Her father had been part of it._ She only just now realized what that meant. Did Edelgard hate her for it? Was she hiding a hidden well of resentment deep within her for all of the children of those noble families? But that was nearly half of their class!

“Fearing that the instability could lead to violence, my uncle, Lord Volkhard von Arundel, spirited me away to Fhirdiad,” Edelgard continued. “I remember almost none of my time there; it all passed by in a blur. We didn’t return until the noble families had successfully stripped my father of his authority and taken the reins of the empire in a bloodless coup. I returned to Enbarr to find my father a changed man, frail, weak, and impotent, and my uncle the power behind the throne. Him, Aegir, Vestra, and the other great nobles of Adrestia.”

Bernadetta could hardly breathe. She didn’t know how Edelgard felt about her father, but she could hear the bitterness in her voice when Edelgard had described what had been taken from him. Surely she would hate the Varley house most of all for what the nobles had done to him!

“Arundel flexed his newfound political muscles by having my siblings and me imprisoned in the dungeons under the Imperial Palace,” Edelgard went on. Bernadetta was awed by how flat, level, and even her voice was—as though she were recounting something she’d read out of a history book and not something that she herself had experienced. Yet despite her dispassionate tone, Edelgard’s fingers curled tighter around Bernadetta’s paw as though she would fall without something to grip. “Arundel oversaw our imprisonment and had medical experiments conducted on us, all the while taunting my father as he wept for his children—mocking him for his helplessness as we suffered under his very nose.

“He and his underlings—the very same raiders we faced down here—did heinous things to us in search of new heights of power. Our bodies were violated, our flesh torn asunder, the blood of monsters poured into our open veins. Aside from myself, those who did not die went mad. One by one, our numbers dwindled, until I had only rats gnawing on the corpses of my family for company. Ten brothers and sisters, eight older, two younger; of them, I am all my father has left, the last scion of the Hresvelg dynasty.”

Edelgard’s words painted a vivid picture in Bernadetta’s head—a picture of children languishing in a dungeon, chained to the walls, caked in filth, emaciated, their skin covered with tapestries of scars and swaths of bloodstained bandages. It was a picture that made the minor abuses Bernadetta’s father had inflicted on her seem so petty and insignificant by comparison.

No wonder Zeke’s attitude had rankled her. And suddenly, everything else made sense—the way she mumbled in her sleep, the night terrors that ripped her away from slumber, her aversion to dark and enclosed places, her fear of rats…

“That was why I had to pursue those children,” Edelgard said, her voice at last cracking. “The same villainy back then is in play here, and we must put a stop to it. Those who slither in the dark must be destroyed to a man and their monstrosity wiped from this world…”

“I’m sorry,” Bernadetta croaked, tears welling up in her eyes. She was so sorry that she forgot that she wasn’t supposed to say she was sorry anymore. How could she be anything _but_ sorry that she’d tricked Edelgard into thinking that their suffering had anything in common? “I’m so sorry, Edelgard—I didn’t mean to act like I had it so bad! I’m just—I’m just so stupid and selfish! You must hate me!”

Edelgard drew her cloak tighter, shaking her head. “No, I don’t hate you at all. The truth is… I understand you.”

“You hate me because you understand me?” Bernadetta took a step back. She wanted to put as much distance now between herself and Edelgard as possible. Why had Edelgard let her cry on her shoulder when she had so little to cry about? Why had she spewed such invective against her father when he was a saint compared to the monster Edelgard had suffered under? Why had she pretended to be so sympathetic? Why was she pretending to _like_ her? What was Edelgard plotting? What was she going to _do_ to her? Was this all a sick joke? “Is this revenge? You want to punish me for what my father did to yours? Is that what this is about?”

“No, of course not!”

“Then it’s because you suffered and got stronger and I didn’t! It must disgust you to even _look_ at me—”

“No, I—Bernadetta, what have I told you about not listening to people?”

“You’re lying to me,” Bernadetta insisted.

“Why would I lie to you?”

“You… made me think my pain mattered, but—”

“It _does.”_ Edelgard grabbed her by the wrist. “Bernadetta, _listen_ to me—”

“You made me think you were _like_ me!” Bernadetta ripped her paw free. “I-It’s some kind of joke, isn’t it? ‘Let’s butter Bernie up and laugh at her! Let’s make her think she has _anything_ in common with Princess Edelgard! It’ll be _hilarious!’_ That’s what this is all about, isn’t it?”

“Bernadetta, please.” Edelgard reached out to her again. “Cease this ridiculous paranoia and take me at my word—”

“I knew it! You think I’m ridiculous!” Bernadetta all but shouted, knocking aside Edelgard’s paw.

“I do not think you’re ridiculous,” Edelgard said. “Listen to me, Bernadetta. You have a spark inside yourself; you need only to set it alight. I want to help you fan that flame; I want you to burn, gloriously—”

“You want to _set me on fire?”_

“Of course not! Bernadetta, calm down—” She tried to grab her again.

“I-If I’m going to die that’d be the w-worst—p-please, anything but—please don’t burn me alive, Your Highness!” Bernadetta squeaked, her breath short, her chest heaving, her pulse singing in her ears. She couldn’t breathe. Edelgard kept reaching for her. She had to get away—

“Bernadetta, _stand still and be quiet!”_ Edelgard shouted. She wore the same dark expression as Count Varley did—the same baleful glare father had whenever he had to discipline her.

Bernadetta didn’t bother to listen to anything else Edelgard had to say to her. Half-blinded by tears, she threw herself out of the camp and ran into the shadows, hoping she would disappear within them and never be found.

* * *

Bernadetta kept running until she couldn’t anymore, until her lungs burned and her chest heaved and her arms and legs stung and her head ached and her heart throbbed. She didn’t care much about where she was going, as long as she ended up somewhere dark and quiet and as far away from Edelgard as possible.

At last, when her paws ached and her muscles burned and she could hardly breathe, let alone move, she collapsed onto the floor, feeling her heaving chest press against the cold stone as she struggled to fill her lungs.

She’d fallen deeper into Abyss, where the lights were sparse and the faint burbling of an underground river echoed in the distance. It was cold down here—cold, dark, and wet. But at least she was alone.

Alone. That was the way things were supposed to be.

She felt so foolish. To think she had been tricked, if only for a few hours, into thinking Edelgard was anything like her. To think she’d let her guard down enough for Edelgard to lead her along, coax her deepest and most shameful traumas out of her, guide her heart gently out of her chest… and then crush it in her fist.

“Oh, Bernie, you idiot,” she told herself, her voice barely a hoarse croak, the words squeaking past the stony lump filling her throat, “what did you expect? She was probably laughing at you this whole time. Even then. She never really believed you. ‘Spooky Bernie has such an active imagination,’ she was thinking…”

 _Why would I lie to you?_ Edelgard’s words rang in her ears. The same dismissive, disingenuous, incredulous tone of everyone who asked her _why_ she always assumed the worst. _Why would I dislike you? Why would I find you annoying? Why would I want to hurt you? Why would you think that?_

Why, why, _why?_ As if there weren't a thousand obvious answers to those questions! Anyone with half an ounce of common sense must have known as well as she did. But to pretend otherwise, as everyone always did—that she was just overreacting, oversensitive, hysterical—they must have derived some sick pleasure from it, just like her father.

And Edelgard wasn't any different.

Bernadetta thought back to the Plague Rat’s attack, the way her heart had leaped when she’d felt Edelgard’s arm wrap firmly around her waist and her paw carefully steady her arm as she’d drawn back her bowstring and taken aim—how _good_ it had felt—and thought back to how nice it had felt to pet her and stroke her fur—how _soothing_ it had felt—and clutched at her chest. It felt as though her heart had been ripped in two.

It had all been a lie all along, hadn’t it? Edelgard had only been drawing her closer to hurt her. She’d even admitted to her face that she lied to people and used them and like the idiot she was, Bernadetta had _still_ trusted her!

That was how it always was, wasn’t it? She wasn’t meant to have friends. She wasn’t meant to have people in her life who cared about her. Most people who did just faked it, and the ones who didn’t were just going to end up like that poor commoner boy, the gardener’s assistant, whom Bernadetta’s father had thrashed within an inch of his life when he’d found them playing together. It was better for her to be down here, alone—better for her, and better for Edelgard not to have a Bernie-shaped millstone around her neck. This was where she belonged.

Why couldn’t she have ended up down here with Dorothea or Petra? They were _nice_ in an uncomplicated way, nice in a way that betrayed no hidden darkness or ulterior motives. Anyone but Edelgard…

She picked herself up, leaning on her bow as a walking stick, and forced herself forward a few more steps before falling again. What was the point, anyway? She didn’t have any destination in mind. She just wanted somewhere to wallow in alone.

She didn’t notice she’d been followed until she was surrounded.

The raiders, those who slither in the dark, the chuds, whatever they called themselves—slipped out of the shadows as she caught her breath, surrounding her in a loose circle, leering at her through beaked facemasks and veils.

With a surprised outcry, she hastily nocked an arrow to her bow and fired, driving an arrow through the heart of one of the raiders; before she could grab another arrow from her quiver, someone ripped the quiver from her back, snapping the leather bandolier slung over her shoulder in two. Panicked, she swung the bow like a quarterstaff, its supple arc cracking her attacker’s skull and flooring him. But by now it was too late—the rest of the raiders were upon her. She struggled as they pinned her down, but she’d exhausted herself so thoroughly now that she could barely even manage to cry out; the bow slipped easily from her paw.

_“Is this one of ours?”_

_“Just take a look at it. You can see it used to be human.”_

_“What do we do with it? Bring it back to Solon?”_

_“Sure. It’ll make a fine test subject…”_

_Test subject._ The words rang in her ears. Were these people the same people who’d done such unspeakable things to Edelgard all those years ago? Were they going to do the same thing to _her?_

Bernadetta thrashed and struggled, desperate to wriggle free of the claws digging into her arms and shoulders. But the more she struggled, the tighter the raiders grasped her, the deeper their claws dug into her skin.

Were they going to kill her? Was she going to die down here—as a mouse, not even leaving a proper body behind? Her father would probably be relieved. The rest of the students at the academy wouldn’t even notice. They’d all think she’d ran away; the idea that she’d be dead wouldn’t even occur to anyone. Maybe her classmates would miss her, but not for long. They would forget about her soon enough. Even Petra, even Dorothea… even Professor Byleth would get over it sooner or later.

But she didn’t want her friends—what few she had—to forget about her. Not anymore.

_“Damn, she’s slippery. Hold her down while I put her to sleep!”_

Bernadetta grabbed the nearest arm, her claws raking through its sleeve and the fur and flesh beneath, and bit down on it as hard as she could. She felt her teeth sink into the flesh, the bristly fur stinging her mouth, the strong coppery stench of blood deadening her nose.

 _“Dammit!”_ her victim squealed, wrenching his arm free. Blood darkened the sleeve of his robe. _“Forget Solon! I’ll kill this rodent myself—”_

Bernadetta’s bow slipped over one of the raiders’ necks; he let out a strangled scream and jerked backward, flopping like a marionette whose strings had all been cut, as he was yanked into the darkness.

_“Biggs! What the—”_

Another scream rang out and was just as suddenly silenced.

 _“Wedge!”_ The raider holding Bernadetta down let go of her, backing away. _“What’s going on—”_

There was a flash of steel, and then another; two more screams rang out and two more raiders fell to the ground. The last one remaining whirled around and held out his hand, a magic circle tracing itself in the air as he prepared to fire a spell.

Another flash, and he too fell.

Bernadetta spat out the blood from her mouth and struggled to catch her breath, her chest heaving. _“Th-Thank you,”_ she gasped as the mouse who’d come to her aid tossed the bow back to her.

He had ashen fur and wore a ragged white cape. Long, straight gray-blue hair framed his face, framing icy eyes. There was an intense look about him—like Edelgard’s, but different, darker somehow.

He wiped his bloodied blade on the slain raider’s robes to clean it, sheathed it at his hip, and looked down at Bernadetta. “Well, well, well… What have we here? You don’t look like one of mine…” He took a step closer. Suddenly too frightened to be grateful, Bernadetta backed away as best she could; her arms and legs felt as weak and limp as cooked noodles. “But you don’t look like one of the raiders, either. What’s your name?”

“U-Uh…” Bernadetta faltered, suddenly realizing what a bad idea it was to give her name to a stranger down here. She was the daughter of a count—what if he decided to hold her for ransom or have her assassinated or worse? “I’m, um… Ber—uh, I-I mean, I don’t have a name!”

The mouse raised an eyebrow. “Indeed,” he responded dryly.

Bernadetta nodded. “U-Uh-huh. M-My parents died before they could name me, a-and, uh, n-no one else gave me a name, so—so that’s it for Ber—uh, m-me. That’s it for me. No name. Nothing.”

The mouse shook his head. “I’ve heard my fair share of sad stories down here in Abyss, and yours is no doubt the saddest. Very well, then. I will simply call you, ‘You.’ Do you mind?”

Bernadetta shook her head. “No complaints from me!” she answered with a nervous laugh. Oh, goddess, what was she getting herself into now? She just wanted to wallow here!

“Okay, You.” The mouse offered her his paw. “Come with me. We’ve got food, water, and shelter not too far from here. You look like you could use at least two of those things.”

Bernadetta took it and let him pull her up, struggling to stay steady on her feet. She used the bow to prop herself up. “A-Are you sure?”

“If you aren’t one of those raiders, then there is a place for you in Abyss,” he assured her. “Try to keep up, though. I won’t coddle you if you fall behind.”

“R-Right. Okay.” As the mouse headed off, Bernadetta hurried to keep close to him. As intimidating has he was, he _had_ just saved her life, after all… “Do… D-Do _you_ have a name?”

“Well, aren’t you in luck? I have more than enough names to make up for your lack thereof.” He turned his head and looked at her over his shoulder, his piercing gaze rooting her to the spot. “I am the Lord of Abyss, the Savage Mockingbird—Yuri of the Ashen Wolves.”

Bernadetta stood stone still, frozen. Her heart leaped into her throat. There was something intensely familiar about those icy eyes. Something she couldn’t quite place, but that still flooded her mind with—what was it? Fear? Guilt? Shame?

“Well?” Yuri asked, noticing that she’d stopped. “Are you coming along or not? I wouldn’t stay down here alone and unarmed if I were you.”

“Um… y-yes! Yes, I’m coming,” Bernadetta stammered, forcing herself to keep moving.

“So what brings you to Abyss?” he asked.

“I, uh… got expelled from the Academy?”

He chuckled. “No kidding. Me too! So is Rhea turning problematic students into mice again?”

 _“…Again?”_ She gasped. “D-Did Lady Rhea turn you into a mouse? Can she _do_ that?”

“Ha! No, no, it’s not _her_ doing I look like a little flour sack with arms and legs. This is… a recent development. _Very_ recent.” He shot her a suspicious glare. “You must have really distinguished yourself for them to have admitted you to the academy without a name.”

“Oh, um—” Bernadetta bit her lip. _Stupid, stupid, stupid Bernie! This whole ruse was the dumbest idea you’d ever had!_ she berated herself.

 _“‘Bernie?’”_ Yuri hissed, wrinkling his brow.

Bernadetta let out a shocked squeak and clamped her paw over her mouth. She’d said the quiet part out loud again! “Oh, um—that’s, uh… a-a nickname. Bernie is a nickname. Short for, uh… w-well, nothing, because I don’t have a…”

“If you wanted me to call you that, you only had to ask,” he told her. “It’s a much better name than ‘You.’”

“O-Okay.”

“So, which will it be? Bernie or You?” There was a note of restless irritation in his voice.

There was something almost gut-churning about hearing her name in his voice. “Um… Uh… W-Whatever you want!”

Yuri let out a put-upon sigh. “Very well, You.”

They kept walking, venturing deeper into the gloom of Abyss. Bernadetta tried to recall the map in her head and place herself on it to no avail; all these hallways looked the same, especially to a mouse, and she hadn’t had any direction in mind when she’d ran off.

“Bernie, Bernie, Bernie,” Yuri said, as though tasting her name like a vintage wine. “I’ve decided I prefer calling you Bernie. Do you mind?”

“Wh-Whatever you want!” Bernadetta squeaked, feeling as though this mouse with his dark aura wasn’t the kind of person she should disagree with.

“I knew a Bernie once. Of course, for _her,_ it wasn’t short for nothing. Her father had had the good sense to name her.”

“It’s a c-common name…” Bernadetta felt something in her chest coil around her heart like a snake—like one of those huge jungle snakes that wrapped themselves around their prey and swallowed them whole. What was it about Yuri that had her so nervous? Maybe he was a serial murderer who only killed people named ‘Bernie!’

“And it can be short for a lot of things,” she added, “l-like Bernard, Bernice, Bernadetta— _Why are you still talking, Bernie? What’s_ wrong _with you? Just shut up!”_

“You don’t look like a Bernard,” Yuri said while she berated herself.

She shook her head.

“Now, as for the Bernie I knew, she was, well, a little clumsy…” He scratched his chin. “A _lot_ clumsy. Terrified of her own shadow. Had a nasty habit of berating herself, too, and always in the third person, as though someone else was speaking through her. I’m sure some people thought she was possessed, especially given her… darker habits. In truth, you and her aren’t so different. But of course, _she_ had a name.”

“What happened to her?” Bernadetta dared to ask.

“…Let’s just say I never saw her again.”

She slowed to a halt. Her feet had grown heavier with every step; now they were so leaden that she couldn’t put one in front of the other if she wanted to. A cold trickle of foreboding ran down her spine. And forget butterflies in her stomach—there was an entire hive of hornets in there!

Why had she ran away from Edelgard? At least she _knew_ Edelgard!

Yuri kept walking until he realized that she’d stopped following him again. “What did I say about falling behind?” he snapped. “I’ve no interest in coddling you anymore.”

Bernadetta tried to breathe. She couldn’t. The lump in her throat had become a stone; she couldn’t suck a morsel of air past it into her lungs. Her head felt light; the shadows seemed to swirl ominously around her.

“What’s the matter? You look as though you’ve seen a ghost,” Yuri said to her, staring at her from over his shoulder.

“U-Uh… I-I’m just… It’s just that…”

A sardonic grin tugged at the corner of his mouth; his shoulders quaked, and he began to laugh. It was a cold and mirthless sound, almost like Hubert’s evil laughter. Was he really a ghost? Was that how he’d slipped out of the darkness to kill those raiders so easily? Was he a phantom, Bernadetta wondered, come to drag her down to the infinite fires of the underworld?

The most Bernadetta could manage to do was take a single step backward, near-paralyzed by fear. She wanted to run away, but her legs wouldn’t obey her. The bow fell from her paw and clattered to the floor as her grip loosened. Yuri’s ghostly gaze pinned her in place.

“I thought you seemed familiar,” he said, turning around to face her. “Of course, though…” He brushed an errant lock of his hair away from his eyes. “It’s hard for us to recognize each other in the shape we’re in, isn’t it?”

He took slow steps toward her. “And I don’t act quite the same way I did back then… although you haven’t changed a bit, Bernadetta von Varley.”

Bernadetta took another step backward and fell flat on her back, reeling. Her head was spinning. Yuri… _knew_ her? From ‘back then?’ But she hadn’t had any friends before she’d been enrolled in the Academy, except for—

_Him._

“Are you here to kill me?” she asked, barely choking out the words. Her father had beaten him nearly to death all those years ago—she’d just assumed he’d died from the trauma. Had he returned as a ghost, or had he clung to life driven solely by a lust for revenge? Would he kill her to get back at her father? Or would he kill her because it was _her_ fault for making friends with him in the first place?

Yuri let out a dismissive bark of laughter. _“Kill_ you? If I had any interest in killing you, I’d have done it already.” He patted the sword sheathed at his hip. “You wouldn’t have even noticed this blade sinking into your back until it was too late. Now how about we bury the hatchet?”

“No… no, no, no…” Bernadetta pulled herself back up and dashed away, throwing herself down the hall. _“No! Edelgard! Edelgard, help!”_

She had to call out for someone, even someone who couldn’t possibly hear her, who couldn’t possibly be there for her, who was so far above her that to expect her to leap in and save the day was delusion. Somebody, _anybody—_ and somehow, the first name that rolled off her tongue was Edelgard’s.

And somehow, against all possibility, Edelgard’s voice rang out in return, echoing down the dark and silent hallway. _“Bernadetta!”_

 _“Edelgard!”_ Her spirits lifting, Bernadetta picked up the pace, her legs burning. Edelgard had tracked her down! She’d been following her all this time!

Edelgard emerged from the shadows, Matthias and Wesper at her sides. Her pale eyes were wide with worry, her axe gripped tightly in her paw, her chest and shoulders heaving from exertion. She held out her paw, inching closer with every step she and Bernadetta took toward each other.

Bernadetta didn’t care how she thought about Edelgard. At this moment, she was infinitely safer to be around than—

She came to a dead stop as a cold length of sharp steel slid across her throat and Yuri’s arm slipped under her shoulder. “Nobody move, or else this mouse squeaks her last!”

Edelgard stopped in her tracks and flung out her arms to stop her cohorts.

Bernadetta struggled to swallow the lump in her throat. “Edelgard, I’m sorry…”

 _“Edelgard?”_ Yuri asked. “As in the imperial princess, Edelgard von Hresvelg?” He chuckled. “I hardly recognized you, milady! Honestly, though, I expected you to be a bit… taller.”

Edelgard bared her teeth, which, admittedly, didn’t make her look very threatening. “Let her go.”

“Your Highness, you’re in no position to be making demands,” Yuri replied. Bernadetta felt the blade push against her throat just a tiny bit harder. One little nudge, one subtle flick of his wrist, and all of her blood would be on the outside; goodbye Bernie, goodbye Edelgard, goodbye Dorothea and Petra and Byleth and Alois and her uncle and anyone else who’d ever been nice to her…

“I’ll spare her life if you set aside your weapons,” he told Edelgard, “you and both your friends, and come with me as my prisoners.”

Edelgard glanced at Matthias, slowly nodded, and let her axe fall to the floor, the clatter of its metal head against the stone tiles echoing through the cavernous hall with the finality of a tolling bell. Matthias did the same, letting his sword slip from his paw. Wesper held up his paws to show that they were empty, even though he was a mage and didn’t need weapons of his own at all.

Yuri nodded, but didn’t remove the blade from Bernadetta’s neck. “Kick them over here.”

Edelgard acquiesced, sliding the weapons across the floor to him. Yuri slowly, furtively crouched down, bringing Bernadetta down with him, and let go of her. She hit the floor like a sack of flour, her heart fluttering against her ribs as she took a deep, grateful breath.

As soon as Yuri had stepped away to collect the weapons, Edelgard rushed to Bernadetta’s side. Bernadetta felt her claws slip gently through her fur, tickling her skin, as Edelgard swept her up in her arms.

 _“Bernadetta,”_ she whispered, her whiskers brushing against Bernadetta’s cheek, _“I’m sorry.”_ For all her earlier rhetoric, her words did not come from a place of strength.

As they embraced, the hall erupted into chaos.

Wesper threw a blast of fire at Yuri; Yuri dodged it with the ease and grace of a dancer. Matthias scurried forward, catching the hilt of his sword off the floor and striking at Yuri; Yuri slithered easily past the first swing of the elegant blade and parried the second strike with his own sword, sparks flying where the blades clashed.

Edelgard let Bernadetta go, swept up her fallen axe, and pressed onward, the head of the axe tracing glittering crescents in the air. Yuri weaved around each strike like a leaf in a storm, untouchable. Bernadetta half expected the blade to pass right through him without leaving a scratch when—or _if_ —a hit finally connected.

Bernadetta grabbed her bow off the floor where she’d dropped it, only to remember she’d left the quiver behind. At best, maybe if she snuck up behind Yuri she could choke him with it…

Yuri dodged yet another of Edelgard’s strikes. _“Adorable!”_ he taunted her. “Is this the best you can do?”

With a roar of a battle cry, Edelgard swung her axe again; this time, Yuri was a hair too slow. The blade cleaved him in two—

And Edelgard found herself staring down at gnarled length of splintered scrap wood with her axe embedded in it.

Bernadetta blinked and clutched her useless bow closer as though it were a talisman. Had Yuri… _vanished?_ Or… had he never been there in the first place? Was he really a ghost?

A peal of haughty laughter rang through the air, bright and overbearing, as a pair of leathery wings swooped through the air; out of the shadows flew a giant bat, gliding on its spiny wings like a miniature wyvern. On the bat sat two pale-furred mice; the one holding the bat’s reins wore a pale yellow-gray cloak and had a mane of long, tightly-curled golden hair; the mouse sitting on the bat’s back behind its rider was none other than Yuri himself.

“I cannot believe you left me waiting in the wings for so long, Yuri,” the rider pouted as her bat traced a figure-eight around the cavernous hall. “Have you no respect for true genius?”

“I’ve got it, Lady Edelgard,” Wesper said, taking aim, but before he could so much as summon a wisp of flame, the bat-rider flung out her paw and a searing bolt of lightning fell from the ceiling and struck him, throwing him off his feet with a pained outcry. Matthias ran after him.

Yuri laughed. “Excellent shot,” he told the rider.

“Of course,” she giggled. “Did you expect any less from Constance of House Nuvelle, the greatest spellcaster in the land?”

He stared down at Edelgard from over the bat’s flank as it continued its lazy figure-eights. “Well, Your Highness? I’m ready to accept your surrender. Or will the great Constance von Nuvelle of the Ashen Wolves have to smite you first?”

Bernadetta looked down at her bow. What a time for her to be out of arrows…

“Wesper’s okay!” Matthias called out to Edelgard, cradling the mage’s limp body. “He’s just got a bad burn on his side, you know, the kind that makes a really cool scar but takes a long time to heal…”

Bernadetta scurried over to his side.

“Aw, thanks, Bernie,” he said, “I don’t think I can carry him by myself, especially if we’re being chased by the Ashen Wolves—”

“Sorry, I’m not here to help you!” she blurted out, snatching one of the unlit matches from his belt, striking the match’s bulbous head on the floor, and nocking it on her bow. _“Stay away from us!”_ she shouted at Yuri, aiming at the bat and firing. The match sailed through the air, its burning tip flickering and fluttering, and nailed the bat in the wing.

 _“Bruce, no!”_ Constance wailed as the bat screeched and writhed, dropping like a stone and hitting the floor.

Yuri gingerly pulled himself out from underneath the bat only to find the edge of Edelgard’s blade at his throat.

“Alright,” he said, looking up at her, “we’ll call it a draw.”

* * *

Caspar paced back and forth across Petra’s desk like a caged animal. The sky outside the windows was turning dark; the air inside the room was little brighter. As night began to fall and time inched forward with all the swiftness of a snail, he all but wore a rut in the wooden surface of the desk, frustration buzzing in every little fraction of an inch of his tiny body from tip to tail.

The rest of the Black Eagles filled the room. Petra sat on the side of her bed with Dorothea at her side. Hubert stood in the corner, brooding and nursing his flask of whiskey. Flayn, who followed the Black Eagles with almost religious fervor whenever she was able to slip out of Seteth’s sight, lay on the boarskin rug on the floor, propping up a book of magic so that Linhardt could more easily read it despite his small size. Ferdinand sat at the desk, one elbow resting on the wood surface; one hand cupping his cheek, the other drumming idly on the wood. The place was about as festive as a funeral, and for good reason.

“There has to be _something_ we can do,” Caspar fumed, stomping across Petra’s desk for the umpteenth time. “We can’t just sit around here doing nothing!”

Ferdinand, who was the only person near enough to make out what he was saying, sighed. “I know, Caspar. But what _can_ we do? None of us know how to find Abyss. If Lady Edelgard truly is down there, she may as well be in Duscur.”

“I think the people who _live_ there can find Abyss just fine,” Linhardt said.

Flayn piped up. “Linhardt says that the people who live in Abyss likely know how to get there,” she repeated for everyone else in the room who didn’t have a mouse’s sensitive ears.

“Which brings up a lovely little paradox,” Hubert grumbled. “How do we ask somebody who lives in Abyss how to get to Abyss, while _they_ are in Abyss and _we_ are…” He took another swig from his flask. “Here.”

“Maybe you should, uh, ease up on the bottle, Hubie?” Dorothea commented. “You’re no good to us drunk.”

“Ah, yes—and I’ve been so useful _sober.”_

Caspar had never heard such a venomous self-loathing behind Hubert’s voice before. The poor guy was taking this situation harder than anyone else. It _was_ kind of his fault that Edelgard was missing and the Empire was in peril, but still… he almost felt sorry for him.

Dorothea held out her hand in his general direction. “At least pass the bottle around so we don’t all have to wallow in sobriety.”

“None for me, thank you,” Flayn said, idly kicking her legs in the air as she turned to the next page in Linhardt’s book.

“Well—we gotta do _something!”_ Caspar said. _“Anything!”_

“We should leave it to the Knights of Seiros,” Ferdinand said. “They are professionals.”

Caspar rolled his eyes. “We’ve _been_ leaving it to them for, what, a whole day? Shows how much _professionals_ can do!”

“Besides, if anybody sees us out and about,” Ferdinand added, “they will surely lock us all in our rooms.”

Caspar kicked a quill pen off Petra’s desk. The more he fumed, the more frustrated he became. The fate of the entire Empire, his _home,_ the home of everyone else here, was hanging on a knife’s edge—there could be a _coup_ going on at this very minute! A coup by a bunch of tattooed wizards who could turn people into mice! How could anyone be expected to sit tight and stay calm?

“Easy, Caspar,” Ferdinand cautioned, slipping his hand behind him. Caspar could feel by the tips of his whiskers the fingers closing in around him. “We are guests in Petra’s room. Do not make me pick you up by the scruff of your neck.”

“You do and I’ll nibble your fingers off!”

“If Caspar is saying what I am thinking he is saying,” Petra spoke up, “then I am agreeing with him. We cannot be powerless.” She made a fist and held it to her chest, closing her eyes and bowing her head. “When Edelgard becomes Emperor, I am trusting that she will treat Brigid with equality. I do not have such trust in these men who wish to make an ‘Agarthan’ empire. We must find Edelgard and put the stop to their plan.”

“See, that’s what I’m talking about!” Caspar said, glad that at least _one_ other person in this room was done with moping around.

“I suppose we could put our heads together and figure something out,” Ferdinand said. “I do not want these monsters controlling the lives of our people, either.”

“I am not sure what combining our heads would accomplish,” Petra said, nonplussed, “nor how we would be doing that. Instead, we should be discussing what we can do and creating a plan.”

Dorothea turned to Hubert. “Well, Hubie? Any ideas?”

With a put-upon sigh, Hubert corked his flask and slipped it back into his pocket. “First things first, we need to leave the dormitories without getting caught. Caspar and Linhardt can escape this room rather easily, but as for us humans, we’ll have considerably more trouble avoiding Jeralt and Shamir.” He scratched his chin thoughtfully for a few seconds. “Flayn, how long do you think you can hold a discussion about fish for?”

Flayn’s eyes lit up.

* * *

Hubert watched from a crack in the door as Captain Jeralt made his rounds outside, the rest of the class waiting behind him with bated breath. Caspar and Linhardt clung to his shoulder, their claws pricking his skin.

Outside, Flayn skipped up to Jeralt, her emerald hair bouncing with every step. “Hello, Mister Jeralt, sir!”

Startled, Jeralt all but leaped out of his skin. “Ah! Flayn, what are you doing out here? Seteth’ll blow his top if he sees you out here alone.”

Flayn bowed. “My apologies, Mister Jeralt, sir.”

“Please, just Jeralt is fine.”

“I was in my room and saw you crossing the campus grounds and simply _had_ to talk to you,” she said, slowly tracing a quarter-circle around Jeralt so that he would turn his back on the door. “Professor Byleth told me that you enjoy fishing almost as much as she does!”

Jeralt chuckled. “Did she, now? Well, I’ll admit, fishing _is_ one of life’s greatest pleasures.”

“Oh, I agree, sir. What is your favorite fish?”

“Favorite fish?” Jeralt scratched his scruffy chin. “Well, that’s a tall order. Cod and whitefish are such staples, especially breaded and fried in oil, but nothing beats seared tilapia on a bed of wild rice with roasted asparagus…”

Hubert slowly inched the door open, careful not to let it creak. Mercifully, Petra seemed to keep the hinges well oiled. The rest of the Black Eagles leaned forward expectantly as the door swung open. _“Last one out closes the door,”_ he whispered. _“Go!”_

He took the lead, creeping down the paved walkway that lined the first floor of the dormitories; the others followed. All the while, he kept one eye on Flayn and Jeralt’s conversation.

“Oh, yes, tilapia is one of my favorites, too!” Flayn agreed, bobbing her head. “But I think my favorite seafood must be shrimp.”

“Shrimp? Ah, I fear it’s been a while since I’ve been near the ocean.” Jeralt mussed his ginger hair as though embarrassed. “I haven’t had a proper shrimp dish in decades.”

“Oh, I know,” Flayn said. “It is so hard to be so inland; there is simply no way to get fresh shrimp all the way from the coastline to Garreg Mach. There are crayfish in the creeks in Faerghus, but they are just not the same.”

Jeralt shook his head. “Shellfish spoils so quickly. But that’s enough for now; why don’t you head back to your big brother?”

Flayn’s eyes met Hubert’s, searching for approval. Hubert nodded.

“Like Big Brother always told me, shrimp is the fruit of the sea,” she said to Jeralt, increasingly animated so as to better hold his undivided attention. “Have you ever thought of it like that? There are so many things you can do with it!”

Hubert led the others onto the grass, across the campus, up the stone steps. It wouldn’t be long until they were out of Jeralt’s sight, but they needed more time…

Ferdinand stubbed his toe on the step. _“Ow!”_ he hissed. Hubert froze, glaring daggers at him. If looks could kill, his situation would be so much worse, as he’d have a body to hide.

Jeralt began to turn his head in the students’ direction. “You can barbecue it, boil it, broil it, bake it, saute it…” Flayn listed, hoping to distract him. “There are shrimp kebabs…”

“Oh, I’ve heard of that,” Jeralt said, focusing on Flayn once again. “That’s an Almyran thing, right? They’re always putting their food on sticks.”

Linhardt sneezed. Hubert suppressed the urge to shush him, knowing that any sound he made would likely carry farther than a mouse’s sneeze.

Flayn nodded. “And there is shrimp creole, shrimp gumbo… Pan-fried, stir-fried, deep-fried… There’s pineapple shrimp, lemon shrimp, coconut shrimp, pepper shrimp, shrimp soup, shrimp stew…”

The knot in his heart loosening, Hubert led the others onward. Just a little farther, past Byleth’s quarters, and they could slip out of Jeralt’s sight…

“Shrimp salad, shrimp and potatoes, shrimp scampi, shrimp burger, shrimp sandwich…” Flayn tilted her head to look past Jeralt’s bulk. “That is… that is about it,” she concluded.

“Wow,” Jeralt said. “I’d never known there were so many ways to cook shrimp.” He patted Flayn on the head. “Now why don’t you hurry back to your big brother before we both get into trouble? I’m sorry, but I’m a little busy here.”

Jeralt began to turn away from her. _“Go, go!”_ Hubert hissed at his classmates, pointing to the alleyway just past Byleth’s quarters. Ferdinand, Dorothea, and Petra ran ahead as silently as they could.

Jeralt’s ears perked up; untold years as a mercenary had honed his senses to a razor’s edge, in spite of Flayn’s laudable efforts to keep him occupied. “Huh? What’s that?”

Flayn grabbed his hand before he could whirl around and spot Hubert and the others. “Wait! Captain Jeralt, I must ask you something! Could you come with me and persuade Big Brother to take me to the ocean? I would be happy to invite you and Professor Byleth; we could cook shrimp in every different way!”

Jeralt chuckled and rested a meaty, calloused hand on her hair, tousling it. “Oh, Flayn, that’s sweet of you. But I’ve got to stay here and keep watch. Can’t have any students wandering the grounds tonight. How about I talk to Seteth tomorrow when this has all blown over?”

Flayn hugged him. “Oh, thank you, Captain Jeralt! I will not forget your kindness!”

“Oh, it’s no skin off my nose. Now hurry back to your room. No dawdling, and no talking to anyone on the way there, or your big brother will have my head on a pike!” Jeralt said as Hubert slipped around the corner and out of sight.

Ferdinand let out a relieved sigh, leaning against the wall. “Phew. I was certain we’d be spotted,” he whispered.

“Yeah, no thanks to you,” Dorothea said.

“Now it is time to be looking for Abyss,” Petra said. “Hubert, are you having any ideas?”

“Abyss is inhabited by criminals and disreputable sorts,” Hubert mused, scratching his chin, “so to find the entrance, we must find a criminal or man of ill repute.”

“Oh, so you’re saying you already know where Abyss is?” Caspar squeaked in his ear.

Hubert winced from the sonic assault, his ears ringing. “Pipe down or I’ll feed you to a cat, Caspar.”

“Well, you’re not going to find Abyss by asking a noble,” Dorothea said, crossing her arms. “Black market traders use it, right? So there might be a merchant who knows.”

Linhardt groaned. “If we wanted to go to the market, we should’ve run the other way!”

A cold hand fell on Hubert’s shoulder opposite the mice. A chill ran up his spine. Dorothea, Ferdinand, and Petra all fell silent, their horrified eyes fixed on him.

“Hi, Hubert,” Byleth said, stepping past him. “Are you all out searching for Edelgard?”

“Of course not,” Hubert said.

“Yes,” Petra said at the exact same time.

“You’re not supposed to be,” Byleth said, crossing her arms sternly.

Hubert slipped behind her and took out his flask. It was a metal flask and had considerable weight to it even though there were only dregs of Adrestian barrel-aged whiskey left in it. He had no qualms about braining his teacher with it if it kept her out of his hair…

“We are sorry,” Ferdinand said, “but Adrestia is our home, and Lady Edelgard is our princess.”

Byleth nodded. “I know. I’m not supposed to be looking for her either. Let’s look for her together.”

Relieved, Hubert slipped the flask back into his pocket.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Behold, more Mousegard art:
> 
>   
> ([source](https://twitter.com/wmm_ebooks/status/1231683197076983809))


	6. Of Mice and Monsters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hubert makes an unexpected new ally. Edelgard clears the air with Bernadetta. Hilda and Lysithea have a tea party. Claude and Dimitri make a grim discovery.

Edelgard’s axe ground against the tines of a battered, tarnished fork, the force of the impact rattling her already-weakened arms and making the damaged muscle and sinew in her right shoulder scream and howl in her head. She forced her foe back and panted, chest heaving, as she switched her grip to her left paw.

The Agarthan raiding party had struck just a few minutes after Edelgard had subdued Yuri and Constance; she and the others been just about to head back to the camp with their new prisoners in tow when the enemy soldiers had surrounded them. In any normal circumstance, Edelgard could have easily dispatched all of these enemies herself, but all this nonstop fighting and running was wearing heavily on her; she felt like she was falling apart at the seams—and her allies weren’t in any better shape.

The fork-wielding rat struck again; she barely managed to dodge the blow. Matthias drew back to her side, just as winded as she was. His sword glistened black with blood. Wesper pushed the other enemies back with a wave of fire and fell to his knees, exhausted, his breath echoing under his beaked mask. Bernadetta fired the last of Matthias’ matches from her bow, striking another rat on the shoulder.

Three enthralled rats, towering six inches tall and clutching forks and crocheting needles like lances and spears, approached from the right; three sword-wielding mice clad in Agarthan armor from the left. Nearly a dozen of their dead compatriots lay at their feet in growing pools of blood.

“Looks like you could use some help there!” Yuri called out from behind them as he struggled against the length of twine that Edelgard had used to tie him and Constance together. “Boy, it sure would be great if someone hadn’t _tied us up!”_

“Turnabout is fair play,” Edelgard shot back at him. “Perhaps you shouldn’t have—”

One of the rats struck; the tines of its fork grazed her side, drawing blood, and ripped ragged holes in her cloak. She felt the silk tear as she pulled herself free and buried her axe in the rat’s skull. The eerie blue light went out of its eyes as it crumpled to the floor.

Constance stirred and woke up, squirming against her bonds. “Yuri? What in blazes is going on here?”

“Oh, nothing, Constance. We’ve been bested by a bunch of idiots and now we’re all going to die. Go back to sleep.”

The enemy swordsmice’ splintered wooden blades cracked against Matthias’ sword as he fended them off. “Y’know, Edelgard, maybe we should let him go?”

“He attacked us first!”

“Yeah, but what if he’s sorry?”

Bernadetta blocked a strike from the remaining rat’s needle with her bow—the only thing it was good for without anything left to shoot. “He’s not sorry!”

“Don’t make me sit here and watch you die like idiots,” Yuri said. “I’ll have nightmares. If they don’t kill me first.”

The rat swung its crocheting needle and struck Bernadetta in the side, shattering her arm and throwing her backward. _“It hurts…”_ she gasped, sprawled on the floor. _“Oh, Bernie, you’re not cut out for this…”_

In retaliation, Edelgard ripped the needle from the rat, the power of the Crest of Flames surging through her body, and shoved it into its belly with all of her might. The need’s hooked end ripped through the rat’s flesh, running it through.

Pandemonium engulfed the battlefield. Edelgard was tired. Every part of her burned, down to the tip of her tail. Her ears rang. She could scarcely hold her breath in her lungs. What little color she could still see was bleeding out, gray fog creeping at the edge of her vision. She’d reached the limits of her stamina.

Wesper patted her on the back. Some of the burning aches faded away, but not enough. “That’s it for me; I’m spent. Maybe we should…” He glanced at Yuri.

“Yes, please, listen to the man in the creepy bird mask!” Yuri shouted out.

“I heard you were stubborn, Your Highness,” Constance spat, “but this is ridiculous! I could kill all these vermin with a single spell!”

A wooden sword cracked against Edelgard’s left wrist, shattering it; as the white-hot pain coursed through her veins, her axe fell to the floor. She hastily swiped it back up with her right paw and narrowly blocked the next strike before it could fracture her skull. She was being whittled away bit by bit; every battle she’d fought down here was part of a war of attrition—and she was losing.

 _“Edelgard, help me! Help me!”_ Bernadetta cried out. Fear seizing her, Edelgard rushed away, following the sound of her voice—

Right up to where Yuri and Constance were sitting.

“Oh, thank the Goddess you came!” Yuri said in a perfect imitation of Bernadetta’s voice, looking up at her with bright eyes and a wide, innocent smile. “Some axe-wielding buffoon tied me up!”

Edelgard clenched her fist, ignoring how much it hurt. If anything, the pain made her even angrier at Yuri.

 _“Edelgard, behind you!”_ Matthias shouted.

Edelgard glanced over her shoulder and caught sight of one of the Agarthan swordsmice barreling toward her with Matthias’ shining steel blade in hand. “Fine,” she spat, slicing through the twine with her axe, “but if you try anything—”

The world lurched and spun around her; she felt like a fish on a hook. The next thing she knew, she was sitting atop a pile of loose twine where Yuri had been just an instant ago and he was standing in front of her.

Yuri swatted aside the enemy mouse’s blade, knocked it back, and flung out his arm, pointing a single finger at it. A pinprick of light flashed at the tip of his claw and with a flick of his wrist, his arm jerked upward and a blast of light caught the mouse dead in the chest. The mouse fell to the floor with a smoking hole in its armor.

“Alright! This party’s getting crazy!” Yuri crowed. “Let’s rock!”

Constance traced a magical seal in the air; as the third rat lumbered toward her, a jagged spear of ice burst out of its mouth, stained red with blood. She laughed as the rat fell to the floor.

Yuri dispatched the remaining two mice just as swiftly as the first, sending their lifeless bodies to join their fallen brethren on the floor. He wiped his bloody blade on his white cape. “There we go. That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

Constance hurried to the side of her beleaguered bat steed and gently stroked its fuzzy head between its large, pointy ears as it stirred. “Oh, Brucie, are you okay?” she cooed, rubbing the bat’s wing where Bernadetta had shot it. “Is the boo-boo that mean little mouse inflicted on you all gone?” She shot a pointed glare at Bernadetta. The bat responded with an eager squeak and a hyperactive twitch of its ears, poking out a long pink tongue and licking its rider’s cheek. “Oh-ho-ho-ho! I was worried about you, too…”

“I’m starting to think you like that bat more than me, Constance,” Yuri said to her as he knelt at Edelgard’s side and channeled a soft wave of healing magic through her aching wounds. “This doesn’t count as trying anything, does it, Your Highness?”

Edelgard rolled her eyes and held her tongue. This man was almost as insufferable as an ally as he’d been as an enemy.

“Of course I like Bruce more than you,” Constance said. “At least he’s quiet.”

* * *

In chess, a player could find themselves in a situation where no matter what move they made, their situation worsened. Not a checkmate, but something worse: a game that was not yet lost, but that had no remaining path to victory. The only recourse the player had was not to move at all—but of course, that, too, meant defeat.

To Hubert, of course, to stand still and do nothing was unthinkable. And with his classmates and his teacher both at a loss to find a way into Abyss, for Edelgard’s sake, he had no choice but to make a losing move.

Solon, the agent in the guise of the monastery’s librarian Tomas, was the only other Agarthan in the Officer’s Academy he knew of, and there was a chance—slim as it was—that in the schism that had divided those who slither in the dark, he was still on Edelgard’s side. If Solon was an ally, and Hubert turned to him and blew his cover in front of his classmates and his teacher, then those who slither in the dark would be effectively removed from Garreg Mach, friend and foe alike—and if he were an enemy, then he would _have_ to be removed for Edelgard’s safety.

Either way, Hubert’s thoughts turned to Enbarr. Thales, whose surface-dwelling disguise was that of Edelgard’s uncle Lord Volkhard von Arundel, was the true seat of power behind the emperor’s throne. Hubert didn’t have the luxury of assuming which side of the schism Thales was on, either. If Thales had decided to throw aside his darling Flame Emperor, he could already be making his move to have a new heir named for the throne. On the other hand, if Thales was still an ally, then the Agarthans on the other side of the schism must have been swiftly plotting to remove _him_ as well, since he was a sizable barrier in their takeover of the empire. Perhaps he’d been transformed into a mouse, too (the image of that fiend reduced to a particularly hideous rodent was a bright spark in the gloomy clouds roiling in Hubert’s mind—hopefully somebody would feed him to a cat or drown him in a basin or simply trample him underfoot).

Either way, Edelgard’s plans were already in shambles. Edelgard could be rescued—Hubert _had_ to believe that—but everything would have to change. Worst case scenario, she would be fighting her war to save Fódlan from the tyranny of Crests and stifling dogma on two fronts, with the Agarthans nipping relentlessly at her flanks all the while—best case scenario, she would be fighting that war alone against the overwhelming might of the status quo, without the Agarthan’s secret connections and advanced technology to lean on.

And it was all Hubert’s fault.

He had been overconfident. He had thought he could hide Edelgard for a day and root out the culprit before any lasting harm could be done. He had thought wrong, and that lapse in judgment had cost Edelgard dearly. But the final cost, when all was said and done, was yet unfathomable.

He didn’t realize how hard it was to breathe until Dorothea laid a hand on his shoulder. “Hubie, are you alright?” she asked.

Ripped from his reverie, Hubert forced himself to fill his burning lungs. Dorothea was probably the only commoner in the academy save for Byleth who was unafraid to lay so much as a hand on him. She’d long since disabused herself of the notion that noblemen deserved any unique respect, having broken too many noble noses in self-defense during her time as an opera star. While Hubert bristled when Dorothea spoke too familiarly with Edelgard, he knew that Edelgard looked at her and saw a vision of the world she wanted to create—one where noble blood meant nothing and nobody was raised above another simply by the accident of their birth.

It wasn’t a world the Church wanted. It wasn’t a world the Agarthans wanted. It was Edelgard’s dream, and like all dreams, it was fading into an ephemeral seafoam as all dreams did upon waking.

“I am fine,” he lied as Dorothea took a seat next to him on one of the benches lining the Black Eagles’ classroom.

“You are looking trapped in your thoughts,” Petra told him, sitting at Dorothea’s side.

“The expression is ‘lost in one’s thoughts,’” he told her.

Petra knitted her eyebrows in concern. “You are not looking lost, though. You are looking _trapped.”_ She mumbled something in a slurry of her native tongue and Fódlanish under her breath, as though searching both languages for the correct word. “And we need you bringing your thoughts _out_ of your head, not letting your thoughts drag you _into_ your head.”

“None of us have a more complete picture of what’s going on here than you, Hubert,” Byleth said, her steely gray eyes boring into his. “You have to share with us anything you know that might lead us to Abyss.”

Hubert nodded. That was right. And that brought him back to where he had started. Would he betray Solon? Of all the losing moves at his disposal, was it the one that staved defeat off the longest?

A loud knock on the door to the classroom disrupted Hubert’s thoughts before they could lead him down another spiral. As Byleth crossed the room to answer it, Hubert lifted his hand to his forehead, hoping his classmates would assume he had a headache from his drinking and think nothing else about it. With Edelgard gone and himself to blame for it, he felt anchorless, rudderless, adrift… _weak._ He wondered how she must feel without him. He could only hope that she would be strong where he could not be.

Byleth cracked the door open enough to speak to whoever was on the other side but not enough to let them in. It was Jeralt, fortunately; the father and daughter conversed in hushed tones. A few snippets of their exchange drifted through the room—he and Shamir had noticed that several rooms in the dormitories were empty and had gotten worried. Evidently, Jeralt was satisfied to glimpse the remaining Black Eagles over Byleth’s shoulder and decided that as long as she was supervising them, they were safe here.

Hubert had no faith in the Goddess, but if he did, he would thank her it had been Jeralt and not Seteth, who would have certainly refused to put up with this tomfoolery.

“As I was saying…” Byleth said, returning to Hubert.

Hubert made his decision. “The librarian may have information about Abyss,” he said to her, sitting tall and alert.

Edelgard would do anything, sacrifice anyone, to meet her goals. He would do as she would; if Solon had to meet a pawn’s end, then so be it.

“Linhardt says that Seteth censors the library, though,” Ferdinand said, consulting with the mice resting on his shoulder. “Er, yes, Caspar, that is correct. If there was anything about Abyss in there, Linhardt _would_ have certainly read it already.”

“Seteth censors the _library,”_ Hubert clarified. “He has no power over the _librarian._ Tomas is a bit of an… iconoclast, deep down.”

Byleth nodded sagely. “Tomas? His quarters are near the knights’ hall. Let’s go.”

She led her students out of the classroom and into the rapidly-darkening courtyard. Each student hugged their cloaks tighter as though hoping they could will themselves to blend in with the encroaching shadows engulfing the monastery. Hubert followed close behind, drawing up the collar and hood of his cloak, mindful of what Flayn had told him the other night about how his pale face stood out in the darkness like a full moon.

This was a dangerous needle to thread, but of all the losing moves he could play, it was perhaps the closest one to winning… if he could pull it off right. He would just have to keep a firm grip on his conversation with Solon. If he played his cards right, the power to preserve Solon’s cover or strip him of his mask would rest solely in his hands.

A large shape came barreling toward him in the darkness; thinking it was a knight, Hubert readied a weak flicker of dark magic—not enough to kill or injure, only to stun—but as the figure came closer, he lowered his hand and dispelled the faint embers of black sparks that had been gathering around his palm.

The man who emerged from the shadows before him was Dedue Molinaro, vassal to Prince Dimitri and the only student on campus who towered over Hubert. In almost every way, he was Hubert’s opposite: he had a dark complexion and brown skin whereas Hubert’s skin was pale as milk; he was strong and sturdy whereas Hubert was decidedly lacking in those respects; he had cropped silver hair pulled up and away from his face in a stub of a ponytail whereas Hubert’s longer black hair spilled messily over his forehead.

“Excuse me, Hubert von Vestra,” Dedue said with a curt, polite bow.

The rest of the Black Eagles paused, hesitant.

“Yes?” Hubert said tersely, not knowing what to expect. Dedue was a man of few words even among his own classmates, and until now none of those words had ever been meant for him. He wasn’t sure what to make of him. Many people assumed ill of a man from Duscur at first glance, especially after what had happened to the Blaiddyd royal family. Hubert knew better than to cling to such preconceptions and prejudices. He had just as much mistrust for Dedue as he did for any other stranger.

“May I speak to you in private? It concerns our respective lords.”

Hubert gave a sidelong glance to his classmates and his teacher, nodded, and let Dedue lead him aside behind one of the tall rosebushes partitioning the courtyard. He didn’t feel threatened by Dedue; the bigger they came, the easier dark magic shredded their defenses, and Dedue was as big as they came. Certainly, Dedue could flatten him with a single blow, but Hubert was sure he was quicker.

“I wish to accompany you on your search,” Dedue said.

“Search for what? I am simply getting some fresh air,” Hubert answered.

“Do not play dumb. Your reputation as a man of cunning precedes you.”

“And why search for Edelgard? She is of no import to you.”

“I am searching for Lord Dimitri.”

“And why do you think our paths cross here?”

“I spoke to Sylvain, who heard from Ashe that His Highness was last seen with Lord Claude. I also spoke to Mercedes, who heard from Lysithea that Lord Claude had been searching for Lady Edelgard. Perhaps if we find one of them, we will find _all_ of them.”

“Is that so?” Hubert eyed Dedue. “I see you couldn’t convince the rest of your class to join you,” he noted.

Dedue shook his head. “I bade them to remain so that if I am caught, they will not be implicated in my actions. I considered enlisting Lord Claude’s retainer, but I am not sure he has one.”

“Oh, you don’t know who his vassal is?” Hubert responded with a sly smirk. In truth, he didn’t know either. While Dedue made clear his devotion to Dimitri as much as Hubert made clear his to Edelgard, nobody among the Golden Deer openly played the same role for Claude. Keeping his vassal hidden was exactly the kind of trickery one would expect of the Riegan heir; through observation and guesswork Hubert had narrowed it down to either Lorenz Hellman Gloucester or Hilda Valentine Goneril, but the former was a bloviating idiot and the latter was a spoiled, lazy brat—unless that was _exactly_ what Claude wanted him to think of them.

“But I digress,” Dedue said, clearly wanting to end this train of thought. “Let us set aside our differences and find our lords together.”

The last thing Hubert wanted was to bring an outsider into this. “No,” he spat, scowling, “let us not. Now I would advise you to hurry back to your room before somebody suspects you of committing an atrocity.”

Dedue responded before Hubert could turn his back on him. “I owe everything to His Highness. I must find him no matter the cost. I know you are just as loyal to Lady Edelgard.” As deliberately venomous and insulting as Hubert’s retort had been, Dedue’s own response betrayed no sign of even the slightest irritation or discomfort. “It must weigh heavily on you, too,” he called out after him, barely raising his voice, as Hubert made to rejoin his class.

Hubert found himself hesitating in mid-step. He cursed this maudlin sentimentality that seemed to have infected him since Edelgard’s abduction and put his foot down. “Excuse me?”

“I was in the greenhouse when His Highness went missing. You made a decision that separated you from your liege as well. I know it must torment you. If you truly care about her, you must carry great pain in your heart tonight.”

Hubert glared at him. It felt strange to have to look _up_ at somebody for once. Dedue stared back with a perfectly composed face. His demeanor was an invisible armor in itself: Axes, arrows, swords, spears, cruel words, harsh stares—all of it bounced off his chest without leaving a scratch.

“Another set of skills will not hurt,” Hubert decided, beckoning Dimitri’s vassal onward as he rejoined his classmates on the other side of the rosebushes. If nothing else, he could comfortably hide behind Dedue and use him as a human shield if things got ugly, which he couldn’t say about any of his much-shorter classmates.

* * *

Claude had to tell himself that plunging into a canal of frigid, rank sewer water was preferable to being eaten by a cat if only so that he’d eventually start believing it.

His claws slipped against the slick stone shoreline of the sewage canal, desperate to find purchase and escape the torrent that had swept him downstream. The roar of the current drowned out all but the faintest overtones of his classmates’ outcries as they followed him deeper into the bowels of Abyss. Even keeping his head above the water was a challenge. Brackish water, tasting as vile as its stench implied, trickled into his mouth and nose despite his best efforts to keep it out.

He struggled to anchor himself to the land, forcing himself up out of the water. The cold air settled on his fur and skin. The water tugged ferociously on his legs and tail, then half-heartedly, slowly relinquishing its grip as he heaved himself onto dry (or dry- _ish,_ at least) land like a fisherman’s prized catch.

He spat the water from his mouth, coughed it out of his lungs, and sneezed it out of his nostrils, chest heaving, then reached back into the water, keeping three paws perched on the shore. A paw curled around his wrist, claws pricking against his skin, and he yanked it out of the water like a fisherman’s prized catch.

Annette was next, and together she and Claude scurried downstream and fished the others out of the water. Soon enough, everyone was accounted for—Claude and Dimitri, Marianne and Annette, Balthus and Hapi, and Cornflower.

Dimitri shook himself like a wet dog, spiking his sodden blonde fur. His soaked, slicked pelt made him look shockingly scrawny. To say the least, he looked like a drowned rat. _“‘Jump in the river’, he said… ‘Mice are champion swimmers,’ he said…”_ he grumbled.

Claude coughed and tried to dry off. It felt like his fur was carrying half his weight in water. “It worked, didn’t it?”

Dimitri gritted his teeth and scowled at him. “I’m never trusting another one of your harebrained schemes again,” he said.

“You’ve never trusted any of my harebrained schemes before.”

“Then I’m not going to start.”

Annette struggled to suppress a snicker. “Sorry, Dimitri. You just look cute when you scowl.” She was right. Having buck teeth _that_ pronounced really limited how threatening someone could look.

“Well, it wasn’t a total loss,” Dimitri said, eyeing Balthus and Hapi. “At least we can interrogate our hostages now.”

Balthus decisively drove his fist into his palm. “Now you’re speaking our language! Alright, Hap, time to interrogate our hostages!”

Hapi cast a disinterested glance at the other mice, then looked pointedly at Balthus. “Uh… who are our hostages, again?”

Balthus chuckled incredulously. “Uh… these guys?” He waved a paw at Claude, Dimitri, and the others.

 _“What?”_ Dimitri bristled. “We’re not your hostages!”

“Sure you are! We captured you, you filthy surface-dwellers!”

“No, _we_ captured _you! You’re_ our prisoners, you sewer rats!”

Hapi crossed her arms. “Well, B and I are the only people with weapons here, so…”

Dimitri wrinkled his nose. “Excuse me? We’re all unarmed!”

Balthus raised his fists. “King of Grappling, remember? And now you’re missing your fancy pocketknife…”

Clearing his throat, Claude stepped in front of Dimitri. “Ahem. _My_ pocketknife, actually, and, well, never mind. The point is, we’re all equal here, so why don’t we all sit down and talk things out like civilized people?” He glanced at Cornflower, who seemed a little less than thrilled to have been tarred with the ‘people’ brush. “Or civilized mice?”

Cornflower stepped back, clasping her paws over her chest. “Please, sir Ashen Wolf, do not harm us! I have four children in my burrow; their names are Stuart, Timothy, Mattimeo—”

Unmoved by either mouse’s plea, Hapi grabbed Marianne by the arm and roughly tugged her to her side. “Oh, hey. Now we have a hostage.”

Marianne may have been a wallflower, but she wasn’t as defenseless as she often came across. Claude had seen her overpower men twice her size with desperate bursts of hidden strength, like a cornered mongoose. Summoning that rare burst of strength, she punched Hapi square in the stomach; Hapi doubled over and took a staggering step backward, her grip loosening just enough for Marianne to slip free.

Marianne’s freedom was sadly short-lived, though—Balthus immediately took hold of her.

“No, no, no,” he said, curling his paw around her fist. “That’s the worst grappling form I’ve ever seen! You’ve got to make a fist like _this,”_ he told her, “with your thumb on the _outside_ between the first and second knuckles on these two fingers. Otherwise you’ll break your thumb. And rotate your wrist like _this_ or you’ll end up with a boxer’s fracture. I think. I mean, it’s a _mouse_ wrist, so—”

 _“Really,_ Balthus?” Hapi coughed. “She’s our _prisoner!”_

Balthus took a step back and proudly put his paws on his hips. “Alright, little lady. Gimme your best shot!”

Bemused, Claude looked haplessly at Dimitri. Dimitri looked haplessly back at him.

“That’s okay…” Marianne said, drawing back. “I’d rather not punch you at all, sir…”

“Hey, you wouldn’t happen to be from House Nuvelle, would you?” Balthus asked her. “Anyway, I just got the greatest idea! Why don’t we all sit down and talk things out like civilized people?”

“Mice,” Claude corrected. “I’ll go first. I’m Claude of the Golden Deer house and this is Dimitri of the Blue Lions,” he said, confident that first names alone wouldn’t give away their royal status. There were lots of Claudes and Dimitris in the world. “These are our classmates, Marianne and Annette. And, uh, Cornflower, of…”

“Just Cornflower,” Cornflower squeaked nervously.

“Golden Deer and Blue Lions, eh? Why didn’t you just _say_ you guys were students?” Balthus asked. “Hapi and I are with the Ashen Wolves. We’re students, too!”

 _“Ex-_ students,” Hapi interjected, rolling her eyes.

“What _are_ the Ashen Wolves?” Annette asked.

Balthus furrowed his brow. “You mean you haven’t heard of us? We’re the secret fourth house of Garreg Mach!”

“For expelled students,” Hapi said.

“Well, if it’s a secret, is it any wonder we haven’t heard of it?” Claude asked, excited to learn more about Abyss and its inhabitants. “So expelled students get sent down here… Does Archbishop Rhea turn them into mice as punishment?”

Balthus laughed. “Nah, this is a recent thing. Y’see, a few months back, someone slipped some weird poison that turns people to mice into Abyss’s water supply.”

“We caught on pretty quickly,” Hapi said. “Or, well, Yuri-Bird and Coco did. Lots of the other people who live down here weren’t so lucky and got, uh… mouse’d.”

“…And eventually, you and your friends succumbed to thirst and met the same fate,” Dimitri finished.

“Us? Nah.” Balthus laughed. “Plenty to drink down here! We’ve been living on nothing but beer for the past two months! At least, I _think_ it’s been two… It’s all sort of a haze…” He scratched his forehead as though to soothe a headache… or, rather, a hangover.

“It was pretty fuckin’ sweet,” Hapi said with a wistful little grin.

“Then these weird insects bit us, and now, well…” He gestured to his mousy physique, which was the furthest thing from that of the skilled brawler he acted like.

“Now we look like little sacks of flour with stubby arms and legs,” she interjected, scratching behind her ear.

“I see,” Claude muttered darkly. “So Abyss must be a test run for what they plan to do on the surface—they’ve tried poisoned water first, but now they’re creating a plague of locusts that will sweep through the land, leaving nothing but confused rodents in its wake.” But _why?_ As he’d told Hubert earlier, _polymorphus muridae_ didn’t _get rid of_ people so much as it _severely inconvenienced_ them. What kind of motive could Monica and her friends possibly have? He supposed that as a method of disrupting a state and subjugating it, it would be a rather bloodless alternative to war… Was _that_ what this was about? Taking over Fódlan by turning everyone in it into mice?

“Basically, we’re at war with a bunch of mice who turned _us_ into mice,” Hapi said, “and the dastards only now managed to finally cut us down to their size.”

“But that doesn’t mean we’re out of the fight,” Balthus bragged. “The Almighty King of Grappling never gives up!”

Dimitri glanced at Cornflower, who Claude noted still seemed quite uncomfortable to be in the presence of the Ashen Wolves. “And it sounds like the _innocent_ talking mice down here have gotten caught between this little fight.”

“Huh?” Balthus wrinkled his nose. _“What_ innocent talking mice?”

* * *

“Innocent talking mice,” Yuri mused, pausing to lap up water from a thimble held between his paws. “I’d never thought there were so many diverse factions of magic mouse people living here in Abyss.”

Edelgard studied her newfound allies—for the time being, provided they didn’t try anything funny—as she held Bernadetta’s head in her lap and burrowed her claws into her companion’s tangled mop of violet hair. The six of them—Edelgard and Bernadetta, Matthias and Wesper, Yuri and Constance (and Constance’s bat, Bruce)—settled down for the night in the outskirts of a human-sized underground village Yuri called Chrysalis Row, huddled in the shadow of ramshackle huts built between two canals of running waste water to make peace. This was the lair of the Ashen Wolves, the so-called ‘fourth house’ of Garreg Mach Monastery’s Officer’s Academy. The shadows writhed and quivered as formerly human mice scurried across them; though Edelgard thought she was doing much better with mice, seeing the shadows move filled her with a cold, spine-tingling unease that didn’t subside until those shadows popped up to say things to Yuri like ‘Hi, boss, great to have you back!’ and ‘Hey, boss, thought you were a goner for sure that time!’

The ragged band of mice that had once been the humans living in Abyss were orphans, vagabonds, fugitives, exiles, heretics of all stripes, all clad in rags torn from their clothing and huddling for shelter in the vast colossi of their former homes.

“If there’s one bright side to all this,” Yuri said as he led the others into town, “it’s that scarcity isn’t so much of a problem anymore. Two dozen of us can sleep on a bed made for one now.”

“Although Yuri, like all sensible people, sleeps alone with a knife under his pillow,” Constance chimed in.

“Well, now that you’ve told them, I’ll have to hide it somewhere else.”

“Wow,” Matthias said to Yuri. “Who’d have thought you’d find out that not all mice are disgusting vermin once you’d been turned into one yourself?” As usual, he took something that on paper sounded bitter and sarcastic and said it completely earnestly and without an ounce of offense meant.

“Don’t get me wrong; I’ve got nothing against mice,” Yuri grumbled, “just as long as they stay out of our food. Fresh bread is hard enough to come by down here without you folk nibbling at what little we have. We’ll stop trying to kill you on sight when you find your own meals. Deal?”

“Um… I was thinking we could work out something a little more cooperative than that?”

Yuri glared at Matthias. “What, are you their leader?”

“Um… Not really, officially. No, I guess. Sorta. We kinda don’t…”

Edelgard nudged him in the ribs with the haft of her axe.

“Yes,” he said. “De facto. I guess. Maybe. No one else calls themselves leader, so hey, why not?”

She shook her head. Matthias was helpless.

“Well, then, maybe we can work something out,” Yuri said, though his tone suggested he highly doubted that. “Constance, let’s check in and see if Balthus and Hapi have gotten back in yet. I want to know how much intelligence they’ve gathered on these raiders that have been troubling us.”

“I _told_ you,” Constance retorted, “if you wanted intelligence gathered—”

“Yes, yes, I know, I should have sent _you._ Are you going or not?”

“Very well, _Lord_ Yuri. Let us see what… _intelligence_ our cohorts have gathered.”

She and Yuri headed into town with their bat trailing behind them. A ragged chorus of mousy cheers rang out from the village. Edelgard felt almost envious, somehow.

“Wow,” Matthias said, beaming. “I can’t believe it. Barely a few hours and you’ve already made peace with the Ashen Wolves. _The_ Ashen Wolves! You’re really going above and beyond the whole prophecy thing.”

“Me? I think this is more _your_ doing, Matthias.”

Matthias grinned sheepishly. He might have blushed underneath his fur. “It’s really—I mean, I’ve got you and Bernie to thank for this. These people have been stamping us out since _seasons_ before the raiders showed up. And now they’re… sorta friends, I guess?”

“Don’t get too used to it. Even the closest of allies can turn on each other. Different factions simply have different needs, but occasionally, their goals align. That’s it. Get what you can from them now and prepare to fight them again later.”

“Okay. Kind of a mood-spoiler.”

“I prefer to think of it as managing expectations.”

“So, uh… that counts for optimism, I guess.” Matthias shrugged, but his good mood quickly reasserted itself.

Wesper went on ahead. “I’m gonna see what they’ve got for food here.”

Edelgard watched the turncoat mouse walk by. He still wore his beaked mage’s mask, which made him look very suspicious (although to be honest, if she had a mask to wear down here, she would wear it all the time, too). “Matthias, follow him and make sure he doesn’t get into trouble.”

Matthias nodded. “With pleasure, boss. Seeing Yuri and his people living down here like little humans…” He sighed, but it was a wistful, almost happy sigh. “I mean, I’ll be honest, I’m not too fond of humans. No one really is. I mean, they treat us like…”

“Rats?”

“I was gonna say mice, but yeah, humans don’t really see a difference; we’re all dirty little pests to them. But when we had cities like theirs, and we didn’t have to worry about food or traps or slithery raider chuds or being decimated by cats… I gotta imagine things were pretty good, then. Kinda like how they’re pretty good over here.” He wrung his paws. “This is the kind of life I want mousefolk to have, y’know?”

“Hmm.” Edelgard nodded noncommittally.

“Which reminds me, uh…” Matthias sheepishly scratched his ear. “About how Zeke treated you when I, uh, accidentally said you and Bernie used to be human…”

“Like you said,” Edelgard said, “you’re not too fond of humans. I imagine your brother isn’t, either.”

“And it sorta ties into… I’m sorry you didn’t really get the hero’s welcome you expected when we rescued those pups. I should’ve warned you. I kinda tried but didn’t really get the right words out, you know? Most of those little guys are gonna die before they’re weaned anyway. We just… try not to get too attached until then.”

Edelgard bowed her head. That was the natural order, she supposed. Prey animals bred like… well, rabbits, stockpiling a surplus to ensure their bloodlines carried on through even the harshest times. She shouldn’t have been so sentimental about it. Even talking mice were still mice.

“Zeke and I were born to two different litters. He was one of thirteen; I was one of six. All the others died within a month. That’s the odds we’re living with. Things were better when things were more peaceful, when we lived more like… well… _you_ human folks.” He shrugged. “Zeke accepts the world like it _is._ Me, I just can’t stop thinking about the way things _ought,_ though, or what my dad said things used to be like, at least. A world were we’ve got enough food and only a few people get sick and massacres don’t happen and rats don’t eat us and pups live long enough for us to give ‘em names…”

Edelgard nodded. She understood—she saw the world as it _ought_ to be, too, without class divisions, without nobles lording over commoners based solely on the misfortune of their birth, without stifling religious dogma or obsession with Crests… Matthias’ vision may have been a thousand times smaller, but it was the same as hers, just as the tiny cities his ancestors had built were human cities writ small.

“Y’know, to be honest… the whole thing about escaping the monastery and making new cities, all this prophecy and these daring escapades between good and evil, I dunno if ol’ Zeke even believes a word of it. I think he just tells my stories to the pups to humor me. Like he just doesn’t want to upset me. I know that’s hard to believe, ‘cause he’s _always_ upsetting me just for kicks, but maybe it’s a line he won’t cross.”

“It seems to me he enjoys embellishing your stories enough.”

“Yeah, I know, but I kinda think, I dunno, maybe he _likes_ it down here?”

“Or he can’t imagine anything better,” Edelgard offered. “Not the way you can. He has his dreams, but whenever he faces the truth of just how wide the gulf is between those dreams and reality, he digs in his heels and turns his back on changing society. We are not so different, Matthias. I want humans to live in a better world as well—one where life is less senselessly wasted.”

“Guess you’re, uh… anxious to get back to the human world and make those changes, huh.”

“Of course.”

“Well, I, uh… I hope you stay down here long enough to help us.” Matthias smiled at her. “Pretty, uh… disappointing end to the prophecy, otherwise.”

Edelgard tried not to betray any stray thoughts on her face or with her body language. She had plenty of sympathy for the mice down here, but this wasn’t where she belonged and this fight was not her fight. She had to return to the surface and regain her humanity before all her painstaking planning fell apart. Although, if she could deal a death blow to those who slither in the dark down here and save Matthias’ mousefolk in the process, who was she to look a gift horse in the mouth?

Bernadetta briefly stirred and rolled onto her side, but did not fully awaken. Yuri’s triage work had healed the last vestiges of her injuries, but it took a skilled bishop to dispel severe fatigue, and it came as no surprise that after running for hours straight, Bernadetta was as fatigued as they came. Edelgard was, too; she still wasn’t sure herself how she’d managed to catch up to Bernadetta in the first place.

Edelgard still couldn’t believe she’d snapped at her like that; as soon as Bernadetta’s fear-widened eyes had met hers she’d realized who she must have sounded like. _Stand still and be quiet._ With those five words, she may as well have threatened to have Bernadetta tied to a chair. For someone who prided herself on her charisma, her ability to convince anyone to follow her, such a gaffe was inexcusable. This situation, as much as she’d adjusted to it, was still wearing down already-frayed nerves; telling Bernadetta about the experiments had done her psyche no favors.

Her fur itched needily, and she found herself wondering if Bernadetta would be too afraid of her now to pet her anymore. She pushed aside those thoughts and tried to ignore them. To think that some part of her wanted to be _pet!_ She was almost disgusted with herself.

Bernadetta stirred again, her eyes flickering open for the briefest of seconds. “Excuse me,” Edelgard told Matthias, pulling herself up and keeping a firm grasp on Bernadetta’s waking body. “Go on ahead without me and see what intelligence you and Wesper can gather.”

Matthias’ eyes lit up. “Yes! Perfect idea, Edelgard! I’d love to know how they protect this place against the chuds. And maybe I can find us more medical supplies, or a place to rest for the night. Oh, and maybe they’ve got a better map of this place than we’ve got! One with more, uh… exits? In case you want to leave?”

“And perhaps you can solidify that burgeoning peace treaty of yours,” Edelgard reminded him. “But keep on your guard. Old rivalries die hard.”

“Yes, of course. I’ll make you proud, Edelgard!” Matthias cried out as he ran off, leaving Edelgard and Bernadetta alone.

As soon as Matthias had left, Bernadetta woke up with a jolt, startled. “E-Edelgard! You—you came back for me?”

“Of course. I couldn’t have you getting hurt…”

Bernadetta grabbed her by the arm. “You have to—” Her eyes darted madly, like those of prey searching for its predator. “You have to help me. Yuri—He wants to—He’s gonna k-kill me…”

Edelgard drew her closer. “Don’t worry about him.”

“N-No, no, you don’t understand; he’s _really_ gonna—” Bernadetta shook her head, squeezing her eyes shut and balling her fists. “Years ago, a—a long time ago, h-he almost died because of me—a-and now he’s back and he wants revenge! Please, don’t let him get me!”

“Shh. Calm down.” Edelgard stroked her fur, hoping it would salve her hysteria, and led her into an alcove where they could talk in private. “Yuri only threatened you to get to me. You have nothing to worry about. He won’t so much as lay a finger on you. I won’t let him.”

Bernadetta pulled away. “Oh. Oh, no. You want me all to yourself, then? Is that it? Why? So _you_ can kill me first?”

“Bernadetta, no—if I had any interest in killing you, I’d have done it a long time ago!” Edelgard felt the words rush out of her mouth bereft of her usual composure. She couldn’t hold them back, couldn’t measure them, couldn’t trim away the rough and ragged edges of her fatigue and frustration. “You’re not allowing yourself to understand me. Just take a deep breath—”

“No.” Bernadetta shook her head. “No, no, of course not. I’m the one who never understands. I’m the one who’s always wrong…”

“Bernadetta, please, once more, listen to _everything_ people say to you; don’t just fill in the blanks with your own preconceptions and wild conspiracies! Just listen to me and _think_ your way through these absurdities!”

“No, Edelgard, _you_ listen to me! B-Because you _don’t_ listen to people, you just badger them into thinking the way _you_ want them to think! I-I mean… oh, you’ve done it now, Bernie…”

Edelgard drew back. “I—I don’t do that…”

“See? There you go again!” Bernadetta clutched at her head as if in pain. “Everything I think is always wrong, and just when I think I understand people it all falls apart, and no one ever takes it seriously! No one ever thinks about how hard it is! Everyone just says, ‘Bernie, just don’t _think_ like that!’ They’re all the same! I’m sorry, but if it was so _easy_ for me to not think the way I do, I just _wouldn’t!_ No one understands, no one _wants_ to understand—they just want me to think properly and act normal, and they think if they just _tell_ me often enough…”

“Bernadetta, for once in your life, calm down!”

Bernadetta trailed off, letting an uncomfortable silence fall in the little alcove as she choked back tears.

Edelgard took a deep breath, trying to calm her fluttering heart and steady her racing pulse. Racing, always racing, measuring out hours’ worth of heartbeats in minutes—she hated it, that sound, the sound of her life spilling through her fingers. She’d lost control, of her words, of her thoughts, of her self, of every part of her life. Here she was, crawling through the sewers, tired and aching, naked save for a ragged scrap of silk tied around her neck, begging a girl frightened out of her mind to just _calm down_ when she couldn’t even ask the same of herself. She couldn’t control herself anymore, Edelgard realized; on the other hand, Bernadetta had _never_ been able to.

“I… I didn’t—I mean… I…” She searched for the right words, but somehow, nothing was coming out right. She thought she knew what to say—she _always_ knew what to say—but somehow it all fell apart when she said it. It never came out meaning what she meant. She’d never felt such a disconnect between her mind and her mouth even when she’d been blatantly lying to people. This wasn’t lying. This was trying to tell the truth and _failing._

How could she expect Bernadetta to understand her? Bernadetta was right. She still didn’t understand her. She barely even understood herself anymore. Inwardly, she cursed her weakness, cursed her frailty. She’d always been willing—not just willing, _prepared—_ to sacrifice anything and everything for the sake of her goals. Her health, her happiness, her own humanity, all prepared to burn at the alter of her beliefs. Here, everything she’d been prepared to sacrifice had already been taken from her and she had nothing to show for it.

Bernadetta looked down at her. Edelgard only just realized that she’d fallen to the floor like a knight swearing fealty. It was an image as pathetic as she felt. Here she was again, falling apart, quivering, shivering, forgetting herself, forgetting the eagle within herself, letting the mouse take control.

“Is _this_ what you’re afraid of?” Edelgard asked, looking up at Bernadetta. “Do you think _this_ can kill you? You’re all I have down here.”

Bernadetta knelt hesitantly at her side. Edelgard could tell from the tension in her legs and shoulders that she was ready to bolt at the first sign of trouble. “Then you… you don’t hate me?”

“No.”

“Or… resent me for what my father did?”

“If you were more like your father, I might. Thankfully, you two are nothing alike.”

Bernadetta let out a small, nervous laugh. “And you don’t want to kill me or hurt me or…”

“No.”

“Why’d you come back for me?”

“Well, I’d told you my darkest secrets,” Edelgard said, feeling a faint self-deprecating smile tug on her cheeks in spite of everything, “so I couldn’t let any enemies capture you and interrogate you.”

“Oh.” Bernadetta looked away and bowed her head. “I guess…”

“And… I owe you. I didn’t think much of you when you first came to Garreg Mach, but you’ve become something incredible since then. You saved me from that bandit a few days back…”

“I-I didn’t even mean to shoot him in the head; it was an accident…”

“You pulled me out of the way when the Plague Rat attacked us…”

“W-Well, I was just s-scared out of my mind…”

“You’ve been a staunch ally to me down here…”

“When I’m not running away from you…”

“You’re an incredible archer. You’ve become so much more than your father’s small imagination could fathom.”

“I… I guess…”

Inch by fraction of an inch, though, despite her protests, Bernadetta leaned closer and closer to Edelgard. Edelgard felt a flash of cold, not painful but rather almost _ticklish,_ at the tip of her snout as their noses briefly brushed against each other and recoiled with a faint yelp of surprise.

“O-Oh, I…” Bernadetta stumbled backward, clasping her paws together. “I, um. I-I don’t know what… I didn’t mean to…”

Edelgard felt a rush of warmth rise to her cheeks and blossom in her chest. Her heart skipped a beat. “No need to apologize,” she insisted. “Everyone makes mistakes.”

Bernadetta nodded sheepishly.

“I didn’t mean to snap at you,” Edelgard said. “It’s… been a stressful day. I haven’t been able to compose myself. But what I said to you, then and now, was inexcusable. I hope you’ll forgive me.”

“Well… everyone makes mistakes.”

“I suppose. Even me.” She pulled her cloak over her shoulders. “I wasn’t so different from you once. When I returned from the dungeon, I was… well, I wasn’t quite myself. I had to sleep with a lit candle at my bedside all through the night. I would panic if I found my back against a bare stone wall. Rats, well… the less said, the better. I barely left my bedroom, trading one cage for another, and refused to stay long in any room that didn’t have windows. I didn’t trust people; I couldn’t speak to them…”

Bernadetta sniffled. “Please, Edelgard… no more. If you really think telling me how bad you had it will make me feel better about what I went through…” she croaked.

“That isn’t what I meant,” Edelgard said. What she meant to say was that she understood what it was like to be a recluse, what it was like to fear the outside world, that even if she didn’t experience it in the same way, she still understood crippling fear. But somehow, she couldn’t bring herself to say it that simply.

Instead of saying anything at all, then, she gently took Bernadetta’s paw and pulled her closer.

Bernadetta was silent for a while, but eventually curled up by her side. “Were you… really afraid to leave your room?” she asked her.

Edelgard nodded. “I was. Eventually, Hubert had to drag me out. Can you imagine _him_ trying to convince someone to go outside and get some sunshine and fresh air?”

Bernadetta laughed. “No way.” She sighed. “It’s… funny to imagine you like that. Especially since you’re so… _not_ like that. At all. You’re nothing like me anymore.”

“Maybe you need someone like Hubert in your life.” It was the only answer Edelgard could give. She couldn’t talk about swallowing all that pain, building a wall around it, shutting it all out until she’d almost forgotten it was there in the first place. It wasn’t a skill she knew how to teach, nor was it a skill anyone deserved to learn. It was a burden she bore so that no one else would have to.

Perhaps it was better that Bernadetta had turned out differently. The only thing that held Edelgard together was ambition; at least Bernadetta could live comfortably as a recluse, even if her mind was her worst enemy.

“I don’t know… maybe someone nicer?”

“Maybe.”

Bernadetta sighed. “Maybe I missed my chance. I’ve only ever had one friend, and…”

“Your father didn’t approve.”

“Almost killed him.”

“And that’s why you think Yuri wants you dead.”

Bernadetta nodded.

“Well… that’s actually not entirely unreasonable,” Edelgard said.

“Oh…” Bernadetta huddled under her cloak. “Oh, no…”

Edelgard had thought Bernadetta would have felt better about having one of her paranoid ideas validated instead of dismissed. “Is it possible that he could have forgiven you?”

Bernadetta’s eyes brightened, as though she’d never thought of that before, but whatever hope she’d felt was immediately quashed. “It’s… no, no, it’s impossible.”

“Is it more impossible than being turned into a mouse? Or less impossible?”

There was a brief smile that flashed across Bernadetta’s face. “Uh… less impossible, I guess.”

“Or, in other words, possible.” Edelgard felt her own spirits lift. “Now consider this. Yuri is right to want revenge, but wouldn’t it make more sense for him to seek it on your heartless father and not you? You never laid a finger on him.”

“Um… I _did_ almost cut his nose off with a pair of garden shears once.”

Edelgard struggled to stifle a yawn and ultimately failed. “That’s a petty thing to want to kill someone over.”

“Yeah, but lots of people kill people over petty things.”

“You’re not wrong.” Edelgard almost laughed. “To be truthful, I don’t trust Yuri either. He’s mercurial.” Mercurial, impossible to pin down. Like Claude, only… darker, less predictable (the idea that someone could be _less_ predictable than Claude almost made her worry). “I give you my word as heir to the Empire that if he means to harm you… he will find me standing in front of you.”

“Really? You mean it?”

“I mean it. Absolutely.”

Bernadetta pressed herself closer. Edelgard felt her cheek rest on her shoulder and her whiskers tickle her chest; she felt her breath hitch when Bernadetta’s tail slipped itself lazily around her own in a loose coil, but as startled as she was, the warm and soft fur weighing on her side kept her surprisingly calm.

She raked her claws gently through Bernadetta’s fur, catching her fingers in snarls and tangles of her hair, and Bernadetta sank into her embrace. Edelgard felt her breath on her shoulder and her whiskers brushing her fur.

“Thank you, Lady Edelgard,” Bernadetta said. “I feel a little better now.” As she snuggled closer, her paw slipped gently under Edelgard’s chin; Edelgard leaned back, lifting her head, as a welcome shiver ran up her spine and her tail twitched happily.

Edelgard couldn’t remember warmth like this, a warmth that numbed the ache in her heart and the throbbing of freshly-exposed emotional wounds. No one else ever had the excuse to get close enough to her, save for the occasional triage situation on the battlefield—Dorothea or Linhardt or Professor Byleth laying hands on her to heal a sprain or fracture or shallow wound—not since…

She leaned in and let Bernadetta’s nose tickle hers again. The last time she’d felt warmth like this, she realized, her siblings had still been alive. And she’d never needed it so badly back then. Not like she had since then.

“El,” she murmured, half-unconscious, her eyes burning with fatigue, her eyelids leaden from weariness, the tension that kept her from falling asleep melting like spring snow. She had a vague inkling that it might not be the best idea to fall asleep here, but she had nothing left to keep her awake.

“Hmm?”

“Nothing. Wake me if you need me, Bernie.”

* * *

It was a chilly night; with nothing but a rain cloak over her nightgown, Hilda Valentine Goneril shivered from the brisk northern wind blowing through the monastery and cursed that she had to be out and about at this hour. She was the laziest girl in Leicester, and her only ambition was to grow up to be the laziest woman in Leicester, but even so, she still had her principles—and that was why she was standing out in the cold with Lysithea tonight.

Lysithea eased open the door to the monks’ quarters, gently pressing on the oaken surface to push the door slowly enough that its hinges wouldn’t squeak. “Nobody’s forcing you to come along,” she told her.

“Don’t you give me that,” Hilda snapped as she and Lysithea crept over the threshold into the hallway. As if she could let _another_ one of her classmates go missing after Claude and Marianne had disappeared! Sure, she desperately wanted to be in her room right now, curled up under a warm duvet and sleeping this whole crisis away, but when she’d caught Lysithea sneaking out of the dormitories, what choice had she had?

“What? It’s true. I don’t need your help walking across the monastery like I’m some child,” Lysithea said, pouting.

“Even if you were an old hag, I _still_ wouldn’t let you go out alone,” Hilda said, closing the door just as gently behind her. “This whole situation is such a pain. Do you really think it’s true?”

“Do I think _what’s_ true?”

“The rumors. That whoever’s been kidnapping students is doing some magic and turning them into mice.”

Lysithea held the book clutched under her arm tighter, her pale pink eyes scanning the floor. “…It’s possible.”

Oh, great. So Claude really _had_ gone and gotten himself turned into a mouse! Honestly, if anyone asked Hilda, he deserved it. And maybe it was for the best—maybe that would teach him to stop sticking his nose where it didn’t belong. And he’d probably make a cute mouse.

“There’s really a spell that can do that?” she asked.

“Yes, but it’s difficult magic, and highly regulated, too. Only a few people in all of Fódlan have been allowed to learn it.” Lysithea crept up to Tomas’ room and knocked gently on the door. A few seconds passed with no response.

“He’s probably sleeping,” Hilda said, grabbing Lysithea’s arm. “Let’s try again tomorrow.”

“No. This book is due back today.”

“Due b—It’s not even a _library_ book!” she hissed, remembering in the nick of time to keep her voice down. “What’s he going to do? Charge a late fee? If he is, I’ll pay it for you! Let’s just go back to the dorms. I’ve got some new nail polish we can try out…”

“I can’t let him think I’m irresponsible,” Lysithea retorted, and that was the last word she would hear on the subject. She knocked again.

“Can we leave it with someone else and have them deliver it?” Hilda asked, eyeing the halls. She could feel her heart pounding against her ribs. If anyone caught them out here, they’d be dead! Seteth would nail their asses to the wall! He might even expel them, or worse, make them have to _clean the stables_ as punishment!

“This is part of Tomas’ personal collection. It’s a _banned_ book, so if we let anyone else have it, they’ll just bring it straight to Seteth and have it burned.”

“Okay, okay, I get it.” She crossed her arms. “What’re you gonna do if he’s asleep, then—”

Lysithea crouched down and raised a finger, conjuring a single tongue of violet-black flame that sprouted from her fingertip like a claw, teardrop-shaped like a candle’s flame but as hard and unwavering as a knife’s blade; with slow and deliberate movements, she inserted the flame into the door’s lock. Violet sparks shot silently from the hole it bored through the metal, dancing on Lysithea’s pale hand.

Hilda clasped a hand over her mouth. _“What the fuck are you doing?”_ she gasped.

“Returning his book.” Lysithea pulled her finger away and extinguished the black flame with a flick of her wrist, then gingerly nudged the door open. It swung on its hinges as though it had never been locked in the first place.

Hilda nodded. “O-Okay,” she mumbled weakly. It never ceased to amaze her just how much of a _prodigy_ Lysithea was. Raw power, precision, she had it all. In their last training exercise, Hilda had seen her mow through half a dozen armored knights like they were paper dolls. She was practically a baby and had more magical power in her finger than most adults had in their whole bodies. And to top that all off, she was as cute as a button. It almost wasn’t fair.

The two of them crept into Tomas’ room. It was empty. Like any other monk’s quarters, it was unfathomably austere. A mattress resting flush against the floor that was probably only marginally softer than the floor, covered in a thin blanket; a desk piled high with books and parchment scrolls, lit by the guttering light of a worn-down nub of a candle; a chest of drawers no doubt filled with nothing but bland, boring monastic vestments. But Tomas did have some odd luxuries—a table in the center of the room with a kettle of tea and a chipped teacup lit by an oil lamp and a shelf packed with books.

Lysithea went to the bookshelf and slotted her book into an empty spot, nestling it with its kin, while Hilda waited impatiently at the door and kept a wary eye on the hallway.

Something white fell from the bookshelf to the floor. Curious, Lysithea knelt down and picked it up off the floor. Hilda watched her bend down with agonizing slowness and barely missed the telltale creep of lantern light from around the corner of the hallway up ahead. A long shadow swept around the corner in the light’s wake.

Without thinking, Hilda rushed into the room and closed the door behind her. Hopefully, no one would notice the hole Lysithea had burned through the lock. Her heart pounded.

“What’s wrong?” Lysithea asked, looking up from the object she’d picked up.

“There’s someone coming this way. If we get caught down here, we could be—”

Lysithea’s eyes widened in horror, her already-pale complexion turning ashen. “Expelled!” she gasped.

“—forced to do chores!” Hilda finished. “Or expelled. That too.”

Lysithea held up the white thing she’d picked up. “While you’re here, have a look at this.”

Hilda wasn’t the least bit interested, but figured that Lysithea would probably tell her anyway. It looked like a page from a book, but it wasn’t any kind of paper she’d ever seen before. Its edges were crisp and as straight as a broadsword’s edge, and looked just as sharp; it was thin, too, and as white as Lysithea’s snow-colored hair. And on that paper was what looked like a map of a city, but impeccably drawn in a way no cartographer could manage.

“Even a printing press can’t make images this clean,” Lysithea murmured, her eyes fixed on the map. “All the straight lines are too straight, all the curves too curved, and every pen stroke is uniform beyond the dexterity of any human. And the notes written on the map—the handwriting is impossibly impeccable! The outline of this map looks like Garreg Mach, but everything inside is completely unrecognizable… What in the Goddess’ name _is_ this thing?”

The door behind them swung open swiftly enough to creak and squeal. Hilda felt as though someone had shoved a ramrod up her spine; Lysithea hastily folded the map and stuffed it into her cloak.

Tomas stepped over the threshold and let the door swing shut behind him as he extinguished and set down his lantern. “Miss Ordelia? Miss Goneril?” he inquired. A warm smile lit up his face. “What in blazes are you doing in my room?” Somehow, he didn’t sound the least bit angry or irate. His smile reached his eyes, and there wasn’t a hint of worry wrinkling his high forehead.

“Oh, um—B-Brother Tomas,” Lysithea stammered, “I was just…”

“We returned your book,” Hilda said.

“Ah.” Tomas glanced back at the door. “I could have sworn I’d locked the door, but…” He ran a hand through his thinning sandy hair. “Oh, I’d forget my head if it wasn’t attached. Forgive this old fool for keeping you waiting. Did you find the book enlightening?”

“Oh, yes.” Lysithea nodded eagerly. “I found it most enlightening! The section on polymorphic spells, especially!”

“Oh?” Tomas raised his eyebrows, his smile widening. “Perhaps you’re keen to study them one day…”

“Perhaps,” Lysithea said.

“We’re sorry for the intrusion,” Hilda said, taking Lysithea by the arm. “Let’s just get out of your hair…” She couldn’t believe her luck. Now all she and Lysithea had to do was slip back into the dormitories and they’d be home free!

“Oh, but you came all this way,” Tomas said, gesturing to his tea set. “and it can’t have been easy to sneak out of your bedrooms, given the circumstances. Would you care for a cup of tea to revitalize your spirits? I’m afraid it’s quite cold, but it’s a special blend that is meant to be drunk over ice.”

“That sounds great,” Hilda confessed, only just realizing that she was thirsty. It couldn’t hurt to waste a little more time here, could it?

“Excellent! Both of you, take a seat.” Tomas poured a deep reddish-brown tea into three cups. “I’m afraid I only have two chairs, though… why don’t you two sit down and I’ll stand?”

“Oh, but you’re so old,” Lysithea said.

“Thank you, Brother Tomas,” said Hilda, never remiss to pass up an opportunity to sit instead of stand.

“No, no, take my desk chair. I insist,” Tomas told Lysithea. “I don’t mind standing. This old body has more life yet in it than you know.”

The two of them sat down. Hilda picked up her teacup and sniffed at it. It was stone cold, but still smelled of apple and lemon; the color of the tea was so dark, though, that it seemed horribly oversteeped. She had her doubts it would taste as good cold as Tomas claimed, and inwardly wondered if she could just pretend she wasn’t thirsty after all.

“I’m surprised you have books about magic in your personal collection,” Lysithea said to Tomas, ignoring her tea. “Do you find the subject interesting?”

“I dabble,” Tomas said, “though I’ll admit I have no talent for the stuff. Not like you and your wonderful classmates.”

“Hmph. I’m not _talented,”_ Lysithea muttered, “I just _work_ hard.” She went into a sour mood when people called her talented or said she was a prodigy, as though it erased all her hard work. Hilda hoped that someday, when she was older, she’d figure out that half the fun of being good at something was making it look _easy_ to everyone else.

“Oh, I didn’t mean to imply otherwise,” Tomas said, soothing her, “merely that your hard work makes it seem so _effortless._ Like Miss Goneril here.”

Hilda blushed. “Me? Work hard? Oh, please. I’m just a delicate flower; I never strain myself.”

“Oh, I don’t think so.” Tomas took a sip of his tea. “You must exert quite a lot of effort to look so effortlessly beautiful.”

Hilda squirmed uncomfortably in her seat and tried not to cringe. Sure, he was _right,_ but weren’t monks supposed to be celibate? Why was he acting so lecherous? “Th-Thank you…?”

Lysithea took an experimental sip of the tea. “Oh, it’s… sweet,” she noted, pleasantly surprised.

“The sweetness makes it more palatable cold,” Tomas said. “I poured in several teaspoons of sugar while it was boiling earlier today. You must put the sugar in while the water boils so that it dissolves properly, otherwise you’ll end up with a lump of sugar at the bottom of your kettle.”

Deciding she could give the weird cold tea a chance, Hilda took a sip. It _was_ good. Sweet (almost _too_ sweet), with notes of tartness, and deeply refreshing—it could be a hit in the south if someone could figure out a way to keep it cool in the summer.

“Back to the subject of magic,” Lysithea said, leaning forward, “have you heard the rumors?”

“I have. I suppose that’s why you were so interested in the polymorphic spell section.”

“Well, it _was_ serendipitous of me to come across that section. It is a frightening branch of magic.”

“Oh, yes, to be sure.” Tomas tilted the kettle and refilled her cup. “Drink up, Miss Ordelia. You won’t get the full effect otherwise.”

“With pleasure; this is _excellent!”_ Lysithea promptly drank away half of the cup in one swig.

Hilda squinted at her teacup. “Is there some sort of herbal remedy in this? I’ve gotten sick from one of those once.”

“Oh, it’s just a little concoction that helps you start the day bright-eyed and bushy-tailed,” Tomas said with a coy little smile. “I picked it up from the apothecary in town. It’s a tad bitter, which makes the sugar all the more necessary to balance it out. Now, Miss Ordelia, you were saying…”

“I simply meant that the power to alter someone’s body without their consent is… terrifying.” Lysithea shivered. “You could do horrible things to a person.” She sounded oddly glum and sober, and the downcast look on her face matched it.

“Yes. Yes you could. There are many beneficial uses for such spells, but there is a good reason the Church of Seiros restricts the books that discuss such magic. In fact, anybody wishing to learn to cast polymorphic spells must swear a blood oath to the Archbishop herself first.”

“Do you know how many people in Fódlan know this magic?”

“Very few.” Tomas shook his head. “Very few indeed.”

“Well, the Archbishop must be sending for one of them,” Hilda said, “if someone really _is_ turning students into mice. I think I heard that she’s writing a letter to the Royal Academy of Sorcery in Fhirdiad…”

Tomas’ face fell. “Oh… is she?”

Hilda felt an uncomfortable weight settle in her stomach like she’d swallowed a stone. “Uh… I-I dunno… _is_ she?”

“If she is, then I’m surprised the news hasn’t reached her.” Tomas set his half-empty teacup down as though to punctuate his sentence and a hush fell over his soft voice. “Professor Severus Remus Minerva, Fódlan's foremost expert in polymorphic magic… passed away just last month.”

Hilda clasped a hand over her mouth, shocked. When she’d thought that maybe Claude _deserved_ to be turned into a mouse, she hadn’t meant _forever!_ “Well… s-surely there’s someone out there who can undo that kind of magic! Did he have any students or apprentices?”

Tomas nodded. “In all of Fódlan, there is one other person who has such knowledge.”

“We’ve got to tell Lady Rhea, then!” Lysithea cried out, shooting out of her seat and gripping the arms of her chair. “Who is it, Tomas? Do you know him?”

“Well, of course I know him,” Tomas chuckled, his warm and genial smile widening, his lips cracking to show his teeth. “He’s _me.”_

Hilda felt as though the wind had been knocked out of her. “Then you’re…”

“You _monster!”_ Lysithea snarled, black fire wreathing her clenched fists and scorching the arms of her chair.

The flames licking at her pale skin flickered, guttered, and died. Her voice cut short, she looked down at her hands with wide, confused eyes, her lips silently tracing an incantation; then she cried out and collapsed back into her chair like a marionette whose strings had been cut, the leaden weight of her limp limbs dragging her off her seat and onto the floor.

Hilda rushed to the door, but found it as immovable as a solid stone wall—as though Tomas had locked it with magic. Her heart raced; her breath was short and shallow. Had Tomas cast a spell on the tea to poison it? But he’d drank just as much of it as Lysithea had! And what about _herself?_ How much had she drunk? Half a cup? Would it start affecting her, too?

Tomas stood up, contemptuously nudging the writhing mass of skin and fur on the floor with his foot. “‘Monster?’ _Me?”_ he sneered. “I am the _savior_ of this wretched world! What do you have to say to _that,_ vermin?”

Hilda pounded on the door so hard that her palms stung. No use. She screamed. No use. Oh, Goddess, she was going to turn into a mouse and no one would ever find her! Her heart was fluttering like a hummingbird’s wings. And was it just her imagination, or did her breath sound squeakier?

“How I despise you humans,” Tomas went on, pressing his foot atop Lysithea’s shrinking body. “Scurrying about like you own this world, acting like your meager knowledge makes you masters of your domain, thinking you can make yourselves beautiful by draping yourselves in cloth and painting your faces… Howl all you want, you little beasts,” he spat, an evil, toothy grin splitting his face. There was a manic, hateful gleam in his eyes. “I’ve placed a silence spell on this room. No one will hear—”

In her desperation, Hilda snatched the lantern off the floor and smashed it against the side of his head. For all her talk of being a delicate little flower, she was no shrinking violet—when you were the legendary Holst Goneril’s baby sister, you learned how to throw a punch (and a lot of other things, too).

The glass panes of the lantern shattered, littering Tomas’ face with dozens of tiny, oozing lacerations. He reeled back, clutching at his face in pain, his fingernails biting into his skin and tearing it away; where the skin peeled off, the flesh underneath was so white it was nearly blue.

With Tomas occupied, Hilda turned her attention back to the door. It hurt to think about leaving Lysithea here, but she had her own skin to save, and besides, _someone_ had to go and warn Archbishop Rhea and the knights!

She braced her shoulder and charged at the door, recoiling in pain and gritting her teeth as the reverberations from the impact rattled her bones. The door didn’t budge. If only Raphael was here; he could bust the door down easily for her. She scanned the room. What about the window? Could she fit through that? It was just an aperture in the stone wall, no glass…

 _“Miss Hilda Goneril.”_ Tomas spat out her name like a curse. In one hand he held the lamp from his table, the fluted glass around the wick glimmering the light of its dancing flame. In the other he held a little white mouse with the scruff of its neck pinched between his forefinger and thumb, the tip of its limp pink tail nearly brushing against the tip of the flame. _“Step away from the door.”_

Hilda felt a cold sweat settle on her brow. Her nightgown stuck to her back. Something slithered over her foot. Was it just her, or had Tomas gotten taller? And why did her skin feel so prickly? Was the poison taking effect? If only she’d just asked someone else to go with Lysithea… “Oh my God—I-Is that…”

“You’d be surprised how quickly the transformation takes effect when you use the right transmission vector.” Tomas shook the mouse. “Rise and shine, Miss Ordelia. Or are you all tuckered out? Shame on me… I must have given you chamomile by mistake.”

Unnerved, Hilda stepped away from the door. Tomas’ eyes followed her as she nervously circled him. Maybe if he let her get close enough to the window she could throw herself out of it… but what if she got stuck? And what would he do to Lysithea?

 _“Stop.”_ Tomas held the mouse just a little closer to the flame. His face hung from his head like a poorly-applied mask. “Move another muscle and your friend burns.”

 _“Goddess damn you! You’re evil!”_ Hilda gasped. She was sure she could tackle him and knock him out pretty easily, but not when he was literally holding someone’s life in his hands!

“Evil? Ha! From our point of view, _you_ disgusting human beasts are the evil ones.” He paused, as if waiting to see if Hilda would say or do anything in return, then nudged the crumpled cloak lying on the floor where Lysithea had fallen with his foot.

An iridescent blue insect crawled out, fluttered its crystalline wings, and rose into the air, buzzing across the room and lighting on Hilda’s arm. It was huge—easily an inch long—with a swollen, distended abdomen and needle-shaped tongue. She could almost feel the insect’s prickly legs tickling her skin beneath her sleeve as it crawled down toward her wrist.

Only then did she notice that her hand looked perfectly normal. And so did everything else she could see. No part of her was changing—so if the tea hadn’t carried the polymorph spell in it, then how had Tomas gotten Lysithea?

“We have slithered in the dark for ten thousand years, waiting to reclaim this world from the vermin who usurped it,” Tomas cackled. “The time is nigh when we will teach humanity their own lesson—that those who triumph and crush their enemies underfoot are good, and those who are crushed and killed are evil!”

Hilda watched the insect creep up to her wrist, its little legs brushing against her bare skin as it prepared to sink its dartlike tongue into her flesh. _This_ must have been how Lysithea had been poisoned—not with tea, but with whatever was sloshing around in that insect’s swollen abdomen…

Something slithered across the back of her neck. She bit her tongue to keep from screaming.

 _“Ugh. Bugs. Whatever that thing is, I’m guessing nothing good’s going to happen to you if it bites you,”_ a strangely familiar voice squeaked in her ear. _“Hold on, I’ll get it…”_

A tiny tongue of flame zipped through the air like an arrow in flight, ripping through the insect’s head and spattering Hilda’s wrist with black ichor. The decapitated insect’s lifeless carapace fell to the floor, its legs twitching in its death throes. At the same moment, a little brown mouse leaped onto Tomas’ hand and bit him on his thumb. Keeping a tight grasp on Lysithea, he swatted the mouse aside. It fell to the table and and scurried out of sight.

Tomas’ eyes widened. _“What?!”_

He was distracted—this was her chance! Mustering up her courage, Hilda socked him in the face so hard that his jaw sloughed off around her knuckles, leaving his face hanging by a thread. The skin beneath was hideously pale and marked with thick, fat, wormlike veins throbbing across his forehead.

The door burst open with a mighty and deafening crack, and Dedue Molinaro stepped over the threshold, blood dripping from his scuffed knuckles. Flanking him was his polar opposite, Hubert von Vestra. Both of them loomed like titans in the cramped confines of Tomas’ quarters. Hilda’s heart leaped. She was going to make it!

A terrifying rictus split Hubert’s pale lips. Black flames roiled around his hands like coils of writhing snakes. “What was that you just said, Brother Tomas? ‘The victor is good, and the loser is evil?’ Then perhaps it’s time somebody educated _you.”_

Tomas put his back to the window and gripped Lysithea tighter. “Hubert von Vestra, you worm! Another step and I’ll incinerate this Ordelia rat!” He glared hungrily at Dedue next. “Ah, I see you’ve made a friend from Duscur. Tell me, does he _know?”_ He let out another evil cackle, inching closer to the window. “Now, how were you going to ‘educate’ me? What lesson were you planning on teaching me?”

Hubert smirked. “Oh, teaching is the _Professor’s_ responsibility,” he said, his grin widening as a blazing orange whip cut through the air between him and Dedue and struck Tomas across the chest, throwing him against the wall with a mighty enough blow to crack the stone bricks and rattle the bookcase. The table in the center of the room collapsed, the tea kettle and teacups shattering into shards of stained ceramic; the lamp and Lysithea flew from his hands.

Professor Byleth stepped out from behind Dedue and Hubert, her steely gray eyes fixed on Tomas with a merciless glare. She held the Sword of the Creator at her side, its ornately-carved hilt glowing white-orange as its segmented blade retracted and snapped back to its normal length.

“The evil one here is you,” she said. “Do you understand? Or do you need remedial lessons?”

“Fell Star…” Tomas spat, black blood dribbling down his chin. His shredded flesh mask clung to his veiny, corpse-pale true face by a few threads of sinew. With a feral, wordless snarl he threw a blast of dark fire at Hilda before she had time to duck; the Sword of the Creator split apart, lashed out again, and batted the flames out of the air, but in the turmoil, Tomas leaped out of the window and vanished into the night.

Ferdinand von Aegir burst into the room holding a wooden training spear. “Do you have any questions about the syllabus, you vile fiend—”

His shoulders slumped and the fierce enthusiasm vanished from his face as he realized that Tomas had already escaped.

Hilda caught her breath. The nightmare was over. Tomas was gone. What _was_ he? Some kind of demon in human form? Why did he have a face under his face? If he was the only other person in Fódlan who could cast polymorphic spells, then did that mean Lysithea would be a mouse forever? And Claude, and Marianne, and all the other missing students?

_“Hilda? Hilda!”_

With a visceral shudder to clear her head, she realized that Byleth was crouched in front of her, her ancient sword sheathed at her side, and laying a hand on her shoulder. “Hilda, are you alright?”

“Uh, yeah, I’m fine,” she mumbled, still dazed. How could _Tomas_ be the villain here? He was the nicest guy in the whole monastery! “Ugh, gross… I’ve got old man skin all over my knuckles…”

“I cannot believe it,” Ferdinand muttered, surveying the ruins of the room. “Tomas was one of those Agarthans all along? These are frightening foes indeed. If Caspar and Linhardt hadn’t been able to slip under the door, we’d have blundered right in…”

Hubert glared out the window, his fists stuffed into his pockets, his jaw set and his face fixed in a frustrated scowl.

* * *

Claude and his new friends set up camp on the bank of the rank river that ran through Abyss, on the outskirts of—much to his astonishment—a mouse-sized town. There were mouse-sized houses lining a network of winding streets stretched from the stone lip of the sewage canal to the far wall of the hallway, bathed in the guttering, bleak light from the torches overhead. Cubbyholes had been carved into the stone walls, draped with curtains made from scraps of cloth and canvas. It was an unbelievable sight. Until one looked up and saw the enormous ceiling overhead, one could forget that this town was underneath Garreg Mach; until one looked around and saw the giant-scale human-made artifice engulfing the town, one could forget that it was a place built for and by (at least, according to Cornflower) mice.

Dimitri kicked open a wrought-iron gate and stepped across the threshold of the village, only for Cornflower to hastily rush in front of him and urge him back. “We can’t go in there,” she insisted, her raspy, age-worn voice low and urgent. “This is _Mousebrook.”_

“Er… so?”

 _“Cannibals_ live here.” She shuddered. “Consummate cannibals. Or so the rumors say. Mousefolk fear this place more than the surface.”

“I don’t see any signs of life,” Claude noted. The town seemed as quiet as a grave. “We could scavenge for supplies here. A town means clothes, tools, food, weapons…”

“No signs of life just means they could be lying in wait to ambush travelers,” Dimitri told him. Cornflower nodded emphatically in agreement. “We should keep an eye on the place for a while, just to make sure.”

There was a rush of warm breeze and the comforting _fwoosh_ of wood bursting into flame. “I’ve got a fire started!” Annette crowed, although to be fair, it wasn’t much of an accomplishment for a spellcaster to start a fire. She shivered and rubbed her arms gingerly, huddling closer to the little campfire and beckoning the others closer.

“Finally,” Dimitri sighed, stepping away from the fence, “we can dry off.”

“So if you mousefolk don’t live in this town,” Annette asked Cornflower as the seven of them crowded around the fire, “where _do_ you live? Are there other villages?”

Cornflower shook her head. “No, no, the towns have been dangerous for generations. We live in traveling camps.”

“And those aren’t dangerous?” Annette asked her.

“They’re less dangerous,” she said, “and it’s easier to move when the raiders find us—or the Ashen Wolves.”

“Yeah, real sorry about all that,” Balthus said. “Won’t happen anymore. I promise.” He sat on his haunches and stared wistfully at the fire. “Y’know what’d be nice right now? If we had some meat to roast over a spit. I’m hungry as shit.”

Cornflower began to gnaw on a weathered twig.

“Hey, if you’re _that_ hungry, I could go out and find something to cook,” Balthus offered.

She gave him an incredulous look, then shook her head as though she had to remind herself that none of the other mice knew mouse customs. “That’s… sweet of you, but no, I’m just keeping my teeth filed down. I had so much trouble teaching my youngest to gnaw. It got to the point where his teeth had grown so much that he couldn’t close his mouth!”

Balthus chuckled. “Kids, am I right?”

Dimitri picked up a stray piece of detritus and looked down at it, studying it with mounting distress reflected on his face as he contemplated chewing on it.

As the fire burned down to embers and left the charred hunks of wood blackened with patches of dying amber light, Claude kept an eye on the town, but he found himself often staring into the fire. Dimitri brooded, Annette chatted with the other mice, Marianne retreated and set to work re-braiding her hair, but Claude studied the fire as though it could reveal some arcane secret to him.

It was hard to stop thinking. Sometimes his thoughts ran in circles. And with the pale, dull-colored embers gently throbbing before his eyes, he found those wandering thoughts slipping back years and years into the past, across the continent, to Almyra.

It wasn’t like campfires were an unusual sight to him now. Being a student at Garreg Mach and having to tramp every which way across the continent from Fódlan's Fangs in the west to Fódlan’s Throat in the east for hands-on lessons meant a lot of nights spent in tents. But those campfires had never reminded him of the ritual bonfires of his homeland the way this one did. He remembered those rituals fondly—singing and dancing from dusk to dawn around the fires, whooping and howling and screaming like beasts. Those nights were bone-chilling and soul-stirring.

Why, he wondered, was this pathetic little bundle of scrap wood set alight awakening such nostalgia? He wouldn’t call it homesickness—Almyra was little more a home to him than Fódlan was, really; he only had one foot in either world, so no matter where he went, he never quite belonged.

No one here quite belonged, either, Claude noted, his gaze slipping from the glowing embers to the faces of each of the other mice in turn. He saw humans who’d been forced out of the world of humans; mice whose human intellects kept them estranged from the world of beasts; people who were meant to live on the surface, in the sunlight, forced into the darkness. No one belonged. Everyone down here was just like him now. And here he and his classmates were, Dimitri’s so-called ‘temporarily-embarrassed humans,’ strangers to themselves, all wrapping their minds around tails that swept across the floor of their own volition, whiskers that felt the air more acutely than skin could, fur that subtly itched everywhere, ears that twitched and swiveled every which way to catch the slightest sound…

“Claude,” Dimitri asked, irritably smoothing out his damp fur in the hopes it would dry faster that way, “I’m not sure I understand why you came down here in the first place. Why search for Princess Edelgard? You two aren’t exactly friends, from what I can tell.”

“No. Far as I can tell, Her Royal Empress-ness doesn’t have any friends save for that vampiric thrall of hers,” Claude answered.

Annette perked up. “Wait, what? Hubert’s a _vampire?!”_

“Maybe,” Claude said. “Didn’t get a good enough look at his mouth to see if he has fangs, but it wouldn’t surprise me. Anyway, if Edelgard vanishes for good and the Hresvelg dynasty falls, the Adrestian Empire falls into chaos, and _that_ spills over into the Alliance’s borders. From there, who knows?” He shrugged. “Things could get a little dicey for me.”

Dimitri let out a dismissive little grunt, as though he saw right through Claude’s altruism.

“Well, there’s _that,_ and… I haven’t told Hubert this, but I’ve been thinking, if _I’m_ the one who swoops in and rescues Edelgard, she’ll end up owing me a royal favor. And I can scarcely imagine all the ways I could cash that in once we’re ruling our respective states… I could get some sweet concessions out of her if I play my cards right.”

“Hmm… so if _I_ rescue her,” Balthus said, “maybe I could convince her to pay off my gambling debts.”

“An emperor’s ransom wouldn’t be enough, B,” Hapi said, elbowing him in the ribs. “You’d crash Adrestia’s economy.”

Dimitri let out a humorless little chuckle.

“Slightly related question… why’d _you_ come down here?” Claude asked him.

“That’s none of your business.”

“Oh, come on. Throw me a bone. It’s my roguish charm and sheer animal magnetism, isn’t it? You can’t resist following me.” He rakishly ruffled his fur. “I’m sorry; I can’t help being such a heartthrob. It’s a curse.”

“Ugh. Listen to yourself. You sound like Sylvain.”

“Will you two just shut up and kiss already?” Hapi interjected with a roll of her eyes. Annette gasped and gave her a scandalized glare, her cherubic face awash with anger on Dimitri’s behalf. “Or nuzzle noses or whatever it is mice do.”

Dimitri awkwardly cleared his throat as a heavy miasma of discomfort settled in the air. “If I have one regret, it’s not telling Dedue where I was going before you ran off. He must be worried sick about me.”

Claude nodded. Dimitri’s retainer was probably losing his mind right about now. As for Claude’s, surely Hilda was enjoying having a day to herself without having to deal with his antics.

Dimitri sighed, scratching absentmindedly behind his ear. “Poor Dedue… I wonder what he’s d-doing right now.”

Claude’s jaw dropped. He wasn’t sure if Dimitri had stuttered just there or if he’d made a joke. He knew it had to be the former, but still…

“What?” Dimitri wrinkled his nose and sheepishly pulled his hand away from his ear as though he’d only just realized what he’d been doing, then stared at his paw with what almost looked like mild horror. “I-I can’t help if it itches. Does it look funny to you?”

“Uh, no, no, I was, uh…” Claude shrugged. “Never mind.”

The fire faded. Claude watched the town for the slightest movement. Still nothing, and even when all that was left of the fire was ash, _still_ nothing.

“The town seems empty,” he pronounced, standing up and stretching his stiff limbs. “Maybe they all ate each other.”

“Well, then, _one_ of ‘em would be left,” Balthus said. “You can’t eat yourself. Or… _can_ you?”

“Let’s head in,” Claude said.

“But stay on your toes,” Dimitri said. “We’ll leave at the first sign of trouble.”

“I’ve never known you to be so cautious.”

“I’ve never known myself to be three inches tall, either. I’m not in a risk-taking mood right now.”

Claude and the others crept past the open gate into the town. It really was just like any other town on the surface, in spite of its size. The houses were fully furnished—tables, chairs, cabinets, beds, even fine china. But massive arrays of cobwebs shrouded many houses’ interiors, the huge size of the wispy gossamer strands so out-of-proportion that they betrayed the town’s true nature.

Dimitri found a blacksmith’s forge that had long since gone cold and a meager assortment of weapons left unattended—he took the first spear he could find that didn’t break when he bent it over his knee (he went through about half a dozen); Claude was lucky enough to find a single bow and a canvas quiver with almost a dozen arrows; Annette armed herself with a little hatchet.

Balthus and Hapi found supplies and clothes, although there wasn’t much that fit around the self-proclaimed King of Grappling’s ample frame. The two of them circled back to Claude with armfuls of robes, cloaks, belts, and satchels. Balthus now wore no less than five belts, only two of which fit around his waist.

Annette found bottles, flasks, canteens of all sorts, and a well to fill them all in; she returned to the group teetering under the weight of a load almost as big as she was. Dimitri was leery about drinking well water, given what Balthus and Hapi had said about the water supplies in Abyss, but Claude couldn’t see the harm in it. After all, what would another dose of the poison do to them? Turn them into mice _again?_

Marianne found a body.

At the sound of her scream, Claude and the others rushed to her side to find her standing over half a mouse lying on the side of the road, although _which_ half was hard to say. The body had been mutilated nearly beyond recognition; its gray-brown fur was covered in a crust of dried, blackened blood.

Annette retched. Dimitri curled his lip in disgust. “Someone didn’t finish their lunch,” Balthus muttered darkly, prodding the body with his toes.

As Marianne shuddered, Claude let his arm rest over her shoulders and ruffled her fur. Poor thing—she’d have been better off running away when she’d said she should’ve. “It’s alright. Whatever killed this thing has been gone for a long time. We’re safe here.”

That wasn’t the last body they found. As they ventured deeper into the town, they stumbled upon more and more bodies lining the streets and draped over the sills of broken windows. Some were missing limbs, but most, oddly, were whole. Only a few looked like something had tried to make a meal out of them. Claude saw halos of blood surrounding caved-in skulls, spines snapped like twigs, and bodies that had been charred and roasted by what Annette astutely observed had been fire and lightning spells. The largest mass of bodies were all clustered together in the town square, as though they’d all been taken there and slaughtered in a ritual. Buzzing flies—disturbingly large and proportionately loud—circled the bodies like vultures. Claude wondered how long the bodies had been here. The blood was all dry…

“There was a massacre here,” Dimitri observed, his voice more terse and clipped than usual. There was a slight tremor seeping into his voice that Claude had never heard before. The disgust on his face had turned to revulsion; he seemed ready to vomit, or maybe Claude was just projecting. “That’s it, we’re leaving.”

There was a sound of heavy footfalls down the street and the clanking of armor plating. Something was coming—and it was coming from the entrance to the town. Claude’s whiskers picked up something moving—something _big._

 _“Something’s coming,”_ he whispered urgently to the others. _“It’s blocked off our exit. Everyone, hide.”_

As the footsteps came closer, joined by the sound of ragged, bestial breathing, Claude and the others slipped into the nearest house. He peeked out of its broken window, his eyes nearly level with the sill, as the beast stalked down the street, breathing with low, heavy rasps.

It was an enormous rat clad in scraps of armor forged from a discarded gauntlet with a ragged black cape hanging from it shoulders. Knotted, knobbly scars crisscrossed its skin, standing out in stark contrast to its matted black fur; its tail slithered behind it like a snake, writhing to and fro and sweeping the dust from the street. A kitchen knife as long as the rat was tall, its blade scalloped and serrated and spattered with blood, was strapped to its back; the rat wore a bleached, scarred skull over its face like a mask, giving it the grim and grisly visage of a reaper of lost souls. Claude couldn’t help but be reminded of the Death Knight, that black-clad fiend who’d kidnapped Flayn last month.

Claude ducked under the windowsill as it approached, sneaking furtive glances at the lumbering beast wandering through the ghost town. His class had gone on assignments to exterminate wild Demonic Beasts before, and if he was being honest, this one looked just like one of them… except there was no Crest Stone he could see embedded in its forehead. Then again, the skull it wore as a helmet could be covering it, he supposed.

 _“That’s the Plague Rat,”_ Cornflower hissed to him, tugging at his sash as though to drag him down and keep him from poking his head up above the windowsill as though his life depended on it. _“He wanders these halls, killing whomever he pleases… and no matter how much we injure him, he always returns just as strong as before…”_

The Plague Rat ambled almost aimlessly, lifting his head regularly to sniff the air; underneath the skull adorning his head, his whiskers twitched and quivered. He stumbled over a rock lying in the middle of the road and fell to all fours, gingerly feeling his way across the empty town’s road. His whiskers waved and probed the air; his naked, scabrous tail lashed back and forth, sweeping across the ground. Claude leaned just a little farther over the sill and squinted; in the gloom, he could almost see two dark stains running under the eye sockets of the Plague Rat’s macabre helmet. There was no light in those eye sockets—not even the slightest glint of eyeshine.

 _“It’s trying to pick up our scent,”_ Claude whispered to the others. He sniffed the air, his whiskers twitching. Thank goodness, all he could smell was sewage due to the canal’s proximity to the town. The whole air smelled like that, although the Plague Rat’s hideously sour musk stood out like a wrong note in an orchestra played as loudly as possible. Hopefully, the odor was masking the scent of him and his fellow mice.

The Plague Rat lifted his head and sniffed the air again. _“Who’s there?”_ he growled. The low bass rumbles of his voice seemed to reverberate through the ground; Claude could almost feel them in his feet. _“I smell a mouse…”_

Claude hastily ducked back under the sill as the Plague Rat turned his head, empty and sightless eye sockets roving past the empty air where his head had been moments before. Maybe now it was time to run—but a hasty retreat would certainly create too much noise.

The Plague Rat took another whiff of the air and stiffened, raising himself up. _“Where are you?”_

Marianne curled into a ball. _“Goddess protect us…”_

 _“Don’t be so impatient, my pestilent friend.”_ A mouse with dark robes and a peaked, wide-brimmed hat slipped out of the shadows into the street, standing before the beast. _“If you wanted to draw me out, you only need to ask politely.”_

The Plague Rat sniffed the air again and tilted his head downward. Even with the hat’s added height, the mouse was only a little more than half his size. _“Myson…”_

Myson bowed. _“At your service. Now, what brings you all the way over here? I all but gave you Edelgard on a silver platter. Don’t tell me she got away!”_

Claude’s ears perked up. Edelgard really _was_ down here!

The Plague Rat shuddered and snarled, lifting up his helmet to reveal a head just as heavily scarred as the rest of his body. His white, gossamer-thin whiskers writhed like tendrils. As Claude had begun to suspect, his eyes were nothing more than bloody holes in his head. The beast was blind as a bat. He all but threw the skull helmet to the ground. _“She took my damn eyes!”_ he snarled, driving a gnarled fist into the ground with enough force to crack stone. _“That accursed Edelgard!”_

In spite of himself, Dimitri smirked. _“Sounds like Edelgard, alright,”_ he murmured.

 _“Oh, dear.”_ Myson shook his head. _“You_ are _in a sorry state. So you lost Edelgard’s trail, I presume?”_

Further enraged, the Plague Rat let out a beastly roar and pounded his fists on the ground. _“Of course I lost her trail, you oblivious incompetent! You said you would deliver her to me broken! She was_ not _broken!”_

Myson shrugged as he stepped closer to the beast. _“Well, you_ know _sweet little El’s always been as stubborn as a mule. Mind you, if I had had my way,_ that’s _what we would’ve turned her into—”_

As soon as he came within arm’s length, the Plague Rat grabbed him by the throat and lifted him off his feet. Myson writhed and wriggled in his grip, gurgling as he kicked his legs and his tail swished back and forth, its tip sweeping across the ground.

 _“That was a rhetorical_ _question!”_ the Plague Rat snarled.

Dimitri’s grip on Claude’s shoulder tightened.

 _“Don’t tell me you wouldn’t have found it amusing,”_ Myson choked, _“if we had_ literally _made an ass of her—”_

 _“Do not patronize me, Myson,”_ the Plague Rat growled, tightening his grip on Myson’s neck. _“No Agarthan blood flows through your veins; you are no more a beast than I.”_ He dropped the poor mouse to the ground; Myson picked himself up and rubbed gingerly at his throat. _“Know your place. You serve at Solon’s pleasure… and at mine. When you promise to have something done, I expect you to do it.”_

 _“You_ need _me,”_ Myson spat back at him, his voice so rough and raspy one could grate cheese on it.

 _“Hah! What can_ you _do that a hundred other warlocks cannot?”_ the Plague Rat taunted him. _“But_ I _am unique. There is only_ one _Plague Rat; only_ one _reckoning for Edelgard von Hresvelg!”_ He planted a clawed footpaw on Myson’s stomach, pinning him to the ground before he could stand up.

Myson coughed as he tried to squirm out of the Plague Rat’s grip. _“I didn’t mean—”_

 _“Next time, I will not fail!”_ the Plague Rat bellowed. _“Next time, I will break her spirit, then her body, then her mind! She will die too afraid to even_ scream! _And I will do it_ myself, _Myson, you useless, sniveling coward!”_

Claude had to say, if this whole plot was about putting Edelgard into the path of a murderous rat’s temper tantrum, then it was a _really_ roundabout way to assassinate someone. There was sadism, and there was _this._

 _“Give me new eyes,”_ the Plague Rat said to Myson, lifting his paw off the mouse and allowing him to pull himself away, _“or I will tell Solon that you are shirking your responsibilities. You will see how expendable you truly are.”_

Myson bared his fangs and wrinkled his nose, but even in this low light and at such a distance, Claude could tell that he had no fight left him him. _“Very well. Sit down. I’ll be right back.”_

Myson vanished in a flash of violet light. Wracked with apprehension and dread, Claude felt his breath catch in his throat. His heart hammered against his ribs as seconds stretched into minutes. He could only barely hear the faintest of noises from his fellow mice over the Plague Rat’s heavy breathing. Everyone held their breath. All he could make out was the faint, brisk tempo of half a dozen racing pulses.

 _“This house has a back door,”_ Annette whispered to Claude as they waited. _“If we slip out the back and keep a low profile, we can stay clear of that thing’s path…”_

Claude nodded.

 _“Or, hey, it’s blind,”_ Balthus said, _“so maybe we sneak up behind it while it’s waiting and spear its heart out…”_

 _“It’ll sniff us out if we get too close,”_ Dimitri said. _“Claude, can you get a clean shot at it through the window?”_

Claude took his bow and peered out the window, lining up a shot. He could put an arrow through the Plague Rat’s neck easily enough from this vantage point, but…

 _“It’s no use,”_ Cornflower cautioned him. _“How many times do you think we’ve tried to kill that thing already? It never dies…”_

Balthus crossed his arms. _“Bullshit. If it bleeds, we can kill it.”_

If he couldn’t land a mortal wound, Claude reasoned, then he’d end up tipping the Plague Rat off to his location if he shot him. Blind or not, that monster wasn’t an enemy to be reckoned with if his bloodstained blade was any indication. _“The rest of you, hurry out the back door and head for the gate. I’ll draw its attention.”_

Dimitri wrinkled his brow. _“You’ve never been the self-sacrificing type before.”_

 _“Yeah, but I’m the only archer I trust here. I’ll be fine.”_ Claude trained his eye on the Plague Rat and drew back his bowstring until the muscles in his arm burned. He lined the arrowhead up with the Plague Rat’s neck, just under his jawline, then let his aim slip just a little upward, adjusting for the air and gravity…

The Plague Rat lifted his head and sniffed the air, his whiskers quivering, his head jerking left and right, his scarred and notched ears twitching and swiveling.

 _“Go!”_ Claude hissed to the others. _“You won’t have much of a head start if you’re still here when I shoot!”_

The Plague Rat turned his head, the bloodstained and sightless remnants of its eyes boring into Claude’s, and in spite of everything Claude suddenly felt very, _very_ seen. He felt a cold weight settle in his stomach as he quickly adjusted his aim. Now or never…

Just as Claude had been about to release the bowstring and send his arrow flying, the Plague Rat ducked, scurrying away on all fours, low against the ground; Claude barely managed to regain his grip on his arrow. Taking a shot and _missing_ would be more catastrophic than not shooting at all. He had to at least injure this thing. The Plague Rat ambled closer in a meandering zigzag, sniffing the air all the while, as though probing the air for signs of his prey…

A flash of light signified Myson’s return; distracted, the Plague Rat stopped and doubled back, returning to his handler and sitting on his haunches, lowering his head until his bloody sockets met Myson’s beady eyes. As he peeked over the windowsill to observe the scene, Claude hoped to see Myson to lift his paw and cast a healing spell on the beast, but even the dread wrapping icy claws around his heart couldn’t steel him against what he saw instead.

Myson drew a dagger from his robes, and with a flash of steel, he ripped a wet, tumorous mass of clotted blood and congealed aqueous humors from one bloody eye socket, then the next. He tossed the ruined eyeballs to the floor like rotten fruits. The Plague Rat hissed an anguished scream through gritted fangs, his fur bristling and skin crawling, shivering like a baby deer as he lifted his head and choked down a howl of pain. Fresh blood poured down his cheeks and stained his snout a glistening black.

Claude fell back from the window, his bow and arrow slipping from his grasp, and clamped both paws over his snout to hold back a disgusted outburst. His stomach leaped inside him; the bile rose in his throat and stung his mouth. But he didn’t look away. Someone had to see what was going on out there.

As the Plague Rat shivered and moaned, Myson withdrew two glass orbs from his robes. _“These come from our top scientists in Shambhala,”_ he told the Plague Rat, holding one glittering sphere in each paw. _“Make good use of them, or Thales will have both our heads.”_

He shoved both orbs into the empty eye sockets. The Plague Rat rose to his full height and stumbled backward, clamping his paws over his new eyes as he reeled in pain.

_“Is that better?”_

The Plague Rat took a deep breath, his chest swelling, and looked down at Myson. Where once there had been dull, black eye sockets filled with the bloody remnants of a pair of eyes, now there were two shining yellow discs as round and bright as the full moon. Satisfied, he swept his skull helmet off the ground and set it back on his head, letting his new eyes shine through the bony sockets. _“Clear as crystal.”_

Feeling suddenly naked, as though those eerie white eyes could see everything with perfect clarity, Claude dropped to the floor like a stone. Who knew how those eyes worked—whether they were crafted from sorcery or some technology unknown to any part of the world—and what they could see?

 _“I’m glad you like them,”_ Myson said, his voice drifting over the windowsill. _“Now, I’ve got a nursery to tend to… unless you have anything else to ask of me?”_

_“Hrrm. Now that my sight has returned, I want you to get out of it.”_

_“Are you sure? You don’t want to know_ exactly _where Edelgard is right now?”_

The Plague Rat’s dismissive mood made an about-face. _“What?!”_ he hissed, enticed. _“Tell me! Tell me where she is!”_

_“Now, now. Hold your horses, my pestilent friend. I want you to thank me first.”_

The Plague Rat hesitated. _“…Thank you,”_ he finally said, not sounding the least bit grateful, _“for doing your job, as Solon expects from you. He will be pleased. Where is Edelgard?”_

_“I’ll lead you to her. This way.”_

Claude listened to the heavy footfalls of the Plague Rat and the light padding of Myson as the two rodents slipped away, waiting as the sounds faded and all he could hear were his own tense, shallow breaths and those of his friends.

 _“We’ve got to tail them,”_ he said to Dimitri.

Dimitri nodded, his grip on the haft of his spear tightening. For a mouse, he looked awfully grim.

Claude looked out the window at one of the corpses lying prone in the street and thought back to the bodies piled in town square, his heart still racing and breath still short. He’d heard a rumor not too long ago that Edelgard was afraid of rats, and he had to admit that from _this_ perspective, they were definitely something to be afraid of.


	7. The Mockingbird's Cage

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dimitri has probably the third-worst day of his life, or at least a day squarely in his bottom five (so far). Edelgard and Bernadetta participate in a trust-building exercise. Byleth makes a decision for her students, much to Sothis' displeasure.

The piece of paper Lysithea had discovered in Tomas’ quarters was a map of Garreg Mach the likes of which no one had ever seen—and it was something Linhardt could pore over from dusk to dawn if he wanted to. Although Linhardt had a reputation for sleeping his classes away, it wasn’t so much that he was a slacker than that he found things that didn’t interest him insufferably boring. _This,_ though, held his attention and refused to let go. And being a mouse, for all its downsides, gave him a close-up view of it he’d never have been able to enjoy as a human.

Even the paper it was drawn on was fascinating. It was white, _perfectly_ white, uniform to all of its four corners in color and texture to a degree no printer or bookbinder could achieve, and the ink tracing the map was impeccably laid. No blotches, no blemishes where the nib of the cartographer’s pen had lingered, the lines were perfectly straight, the curves were perfectly curved… And the text! Every letter was perfect, and so small… beyond the capabilities of any set of movable type. This was a work of technology beyond anything possible in Fódlan or any neighboring land.

The map traced the borders of Garreg Mach’s walls, but inside those walls, none of the familiar structures of the monastery—not the Officer’s Academy, not the cathedral, neither the abandoned chapel nor the pond nor the dormitories for the monks and knights, not the Goddess Tower or the Holy Tomb or the Archbishop’s audience chamber. Only a labyrinthine maze of tunnels and passages that could only have been the oft-whispered-of leviathan resting under the monastery, Garreg Mach’s shadow.

Abyss.

Linhardt, Caspar, and Lysithea studied the map up close while the others crowded around them, looming overhead like the cathedral’s statues of the saints. Linhardt tried to put them out of his mind. Hubert and Dedue were intimidating enough _without_ them being giants.

Dedue looked down at the map, stonefaced. “Abyss is larger than I expected,” he muttered, seeming almost sad.

“It’ll take _forever_ to search there,” Hilda whined, voicing what he was probably thinking. “Especially since we’re looking for _mice.”_

“Hey, is it just me, or does this writing not make any sense?” Caspar asked, tapping with his foot on one of the labels on the map. “It all looks backwards and then there’s this letter that looks like an upside-down four…”

Lysithea looked down at where he was standing. “It’s not Fódlanish. Or anything else. I’ve never seen this alphabet before.”

“Me neither. That means this map was made by someone who doesn’t come from any land we know of,” Linhardt said.

“Phew. Okay, just checking.” Caspar smirked. “Well, I don’t need to know how to read to know what _these_ are,” he said, gesturing with his foot to a cluster of black rectangles littering one of Abyss’ many corridors. He lifted his head. “Hey, Professor! These are troop positions, right?” he called out to Byleth.

Byleth leaned in closer. “Hmm?”

Caspar cupped his paws around his muzzle. _“Hey, Professor! These are troop positions, right?!”_

If there was one real inconvenience to being a mouse, Linhardt had decided, it was that unless he was perched on someone’s shoulder or standing directly next to their ear, he had to shout at the top of his lungs whenever he needed to make himself heard. He’d figured over the past day that from a human’s perspective a mouse-person’s voice carried maybe two feet at most (though Caspar’s carried about three), and it was so squeaky that a normal human would have to concentrate to make out what was being said. That didn’t bother _him_ so much as it bothered Caspar.

Byleth smiled and reached down, her hand intruding on the mice to tap on the black boxes. “Yes, these look exactly like troop positions to me.”

“I thought those were looking familiar,” Petra said. “They are looking just like the diagrams Professor draws on the blackboard.”

“These crusty freaks have _troops_ stationed under the monastery?” Hilda shuddered, grimacing. “Why haven’t they attacked us yet?”

“Their troops are in, ah, _short_ supply,” Hubert said with a sinister chuckle.

“By which he means,” Ferdinand said, “they turned themselves into mice to infiltrate the monastery, but cannot change themselves back.” He reached down and swept his hand around the map, much to Caspar’s displeasure—he barely managed to jump out of the way. “I do not understand—sorry, Caspar—I do not understand some of these positions, though.”

“He is right,” Dedue said, gesturing to half a dozen passages that were dead ends, but had clusters of black boxes crowding them nonetheless. “Why are troops stationed here? It makes no sense.”

“Yeah, they’re dead ends,” Dorothea said.

“Maybe they aren’t dead ends,” Lysithea said.

Hilda leaned over her. “Huh? Lysithea, did you say something?”

Lysithea let out a frustrated groan. _“I said they aren’t dead ends!”_ she shouted, balling her fists. Her voice cracked from the strain.

“I still didn’t catch that. Hang on.” Hilda reached across the table and scooped her up off the map in spite of her protests. Lysithea desperately tried to wriggle out of her grip like a freshly-caught fish flopping on the pier. “What was that?”

“Maybe _you_ should do the talking for all of us,” Linhardt suggested to Caspar. He’d never thought Caspar’s talent for making noise would be such a valuable asset.

Caspar coughed. “I dunno. At this rate, I’ll wear out my voice by dawn…”

“You’re right, Lysithea,” Byleth said once Lysithea had repeated herself and Hilda had repeated what she’d repeated. “These can’t be dead ends for all the strategic importance they’re being given.” She paused, as though listening to something only she could hear. “What if they’re passages to the surface?”

Petra tapped on the map. “Please be excusing me. This area here is around where the monks live, right? So we are being here.”

“I’m not sure without a map of the monastery to confirm it,” Linhardt said. “But if it is…”

“…Then there’s an entrance to Abyss nearby!” Caspar concluded. “And that’s where Tomas ran off to!”

“And that’s where we have to go,” Byleth said. She pulled a map of the monastery from her satchel and overlaid it atop the map of Abyss, gently brushing Linhardt and Caspar aside. Once she’d lifted both maps off the table, Linhardt conjured a small flame underneath them; the light bled through both leaves of paper to overlay the two maps.

Byleth tapped on the combined maps where the six entrances to Abyss aligned. “Here’s where the entrances are. One path leads from the town square.”

Ferdinand nodded. “Where that vile apothecary lived, I’m sure.”

“One path goes just beyond the monastery walls, in the Sealed Forest. One underneath the abandoned chapel, one near the training hall…”

“That must be where His Highness and Lord Claude went,” Dedue said. “I was told they’d been last seen around there.”

“There’s one just beneath the bridge to the cathedral. And that leaves one last entrance just past the monks’ dormitories… that must be where Tomas went,” Byleth finished. She packed both maps away. “Petra, Ferdinand, go find Seteth and tell him everything we found out here. Dorothea, bring Hilda to the infirmary. Hubert, Dedue…”

Hubert crumpled over and dropped like a stone, falling hard enough to rattle the table. From Linhardt’s perspective, watching him fall to the floor was like watching a woodsman fell a mighty tree.

He always did have trouble knowing when he needed rest, Linhardt thought. At least this time he wouldn’t have to carry him to his room like the last time Hubert had let his sleep deprivation get the best of him.

* * *

The Plague Rat and Myson didn’t so much as leave a _trail_ to follow as they did a fully-paved road—the stench of rat stained the floor of the endless maze of cavernous corridors as indelibly as blood would stain fine rugs.

All through the halls, little signs of mouse civilization long-past dotted the floors. A ruin of something that might have been a tent here and there, a few bones shrouded in rags, a few less thoroughly-decayed corpses that bore very rat-shaped teeth marks—some of which were fresh, even when the corpses weren’t.

Dimitri and Claude led the others down these halls, following the Plague Rat by his trail for hours. They never caught sight of him or his warlock retainer, which Claude was thankful for—Dimitri, on the other hand, was growing more and more irritable by the minute, constantly picking up speed and pressing everyone else to go faster.

“We’ve got to rest a bit, Dimitri,” Claude gasped, propping himself up against his bow like a walking stick as he caught his breath. “The Boar of Faerghus may have limitless stamina, but this mouse of Leicester _doesn’t…”_ He paid a glance at Marianne and Annette, both of whom were huffing and puffing enough that it was clear they agreed with him.

“No, no, I’m fine, I’m fine,” Annette squeaked, panting for breath and clutching at a stitch in her side. “Just gimme one minute… or maybe two… or three… definitely not five…” Marianne didn’t complain at all, aside from her near constant mumbling about how sorry she was.

“I can go on for another couple hours,” Balthus boasted, “but… I gotta admit, I could eat a horse right about now.”

“Claudester’s right,” Hapi said. “My paws are killing me.”

“We can’t stop following the Plague Rat,” Dimitri said, shaking his head. “If we aren’t right behind him when he catches up to El—er, E-Edelgard… I fear the worst.”

Hapi smirked. “You’re looking to curry some favors from the princess too then, huh, Didi?”

Dimitri turned on her, clutching his spear with one paw and a fistful of his cape with the other. “It’s not like that!” he hotly protested. “She’s my…” His gaze fell upon Annette. “Never mind. Perhaps a few minutes’ rest…”

“No, really, I’m fine,” Annette protested although she was doubled over and could hardly breathe. “We can keep going. Let’s just keep going.”

“That’s good for _you,_ dear, but some of us aren’t so spry anymore,” Cornflower piped up, leaning on a cane fashioned from one of the many spears Dimitri had broken back in the town. “Listen to Claude. We _all_ need rest.”

“Shame on you, running a mother of four kids ragged like this,” Balthus chastised Dimitri. “She must be… uh, how old are you?”

“Nearly two years,” Cornflower said.

“Oh. And is that… _old_ for a mouse?”

She nodded. “Older than most.”

Balthus gasped. “Prince Dimitri, how dare you! This lady’s on her deathbed!”

“Excuse me?” Cornflower relied, indignant, as Balthus swept her up off the floor.

Dimitri let out a sigh that was half-frustrated, half-resigned. “I see. Yes, I suppose that as long as we still have the Plague Rat’s trail to follow, we can afford to rest up and regain our strength. Cornflower, are there any nearby camps we could take shelter at?”

“And eat at,” Balthus chimed in. “They’ve gotta have food.”

Cornflower looked up from her perch atop Balthus’ arms and studied the hallway, whiskers twitching. “If we keep going this way, then turn right at the first intersection, then turn left at the third, we’ll find my burrow. But I’m afraid we barely have enough food for ourselves there, let alone you six.”

“Well, we wouldn’t like to impose,” Claude said, “especially if Balthus here is set to eat you out of house and home.”

“Perish the thought!” Balthus replied, scandalized. “I can do a lot of things, but I can’t do _that_ to a lady with kids to feed!” He looked down at Hapi. “Say… Hap… What if we camped out right here, and you summoned a monster… and Annie here used her fire magic here to cook it, and then we all ate it?”

Hapi glared at him. “B, that is one of the dumbest…” She paused, her expression softening as her stomach let out an audible growl. “Plans… I’ve ever… h…. _Shit,_ I’m hungry.”

Everyone, Claude realized, was hungry, especially himself. Knowing what hunger felt like didn’t make it any easier to suffer through.

“Didi, if I summon some rats or another cat, do you think you could kill it for us?” Hapi asked.

Dimitri grimaced. “I am _not_ eating cat! And stop calling me ‘Didi!’”

“Okay, Dimmy.”

“‘Didi’ is fine, actually.”

Hapi sighed. “Alright. Let’s hope I conjure up a rat this time.”

“Um… excuse me, Hapi?” Marianne asked, raising her paw as though she were offering to answer a question in class. Her voice was even softer and more whispery than usual. “How… do you summon monsters?”

“I just did.”

“What, by _sighing?”_ Claude asked.

Hapi cast a furtive, wary glance at everyone, as though expecting dirty looks or worse. “Yeah.”

“That sounds like a terrible burden,” Marianne said.

Hapi rolled her eyes. “Save the pity for someone else. It comes in handy… sometimes.”

There was a glint of eyeshine in the darkness up ahead. Dimitri groaned and readied his spear, motioning for the others to fall back behind him. Claude nocked an arrow to his bow.

“If this thing turns out to be a cat,” Dimitri said, “then I’d rather we starve.”

* * *

Dimitri stared glumly at a hunk of charred meat skewered on his spear, his downcast eyes glistening in the firelight as he moped.

“What’s wrong?” Hapi mumbled through a mouthful of food. “Roasted rat doesn’t offend your noble palate, does it, Didi?”

Claude gnawed on his own hunk of roasted rat flank. It was earthy and pungent, with a gamey tang and texture to it—and in spite of its toughness and how unevenly it had cooked, he couldn’t really say it tasted anywhere _near_ as bad as he’d expected. Cooked right, he mused, perhaps stewed or braised to make it more tender, you could put it on the plate of any noble in Fódlan and tell them it was rabbit and they’d believe you. “Tastes fine to me,” he said.

As he dug in and placated his whining stomach, he studied Dimitri. The young prince of Faerghus was full of surprises. Surprises and secrets. And there was nothing Claude loved more than sniffing out people’s secrets—and fortunately for him, as a mouse he had a very good nose.

He’d been well acquainted with Dimitri the Boar, Dimitri the terror of the training hall, Dimitri the man who left a trail of broken swords and spears in his wake, but this side of Dimitri was new to him. Particularly, it was the hitherto-hidden side of Dimitri that seemed very, _very_ oddly invested in the well-being of one Edelgard von Hresvelg. Claude wondered, could it be that he was smitten with her? Or was there some other link between the two of them? If there was, it seemed fairly one-sided—standoffish as always, Edelgard hardly ever gave him so much as the time of day.

 _She’s my—_ Dimitri had started to say before catching and silencing his rebellious tongue. _She’s my_ what? One-sided infatuation? Childhood friend? Secret lover? Bitter rival? Long-lost sister? Mortal enemy? All of the above? None of the above? Pick two? There were so many possibilities, each one more scandalous than the last!

Claude had thought Edelgard had been the mysterious one, but there was more to Dimitri than met the eye as well. Between the two of them and the Church of Seiros, Fódlan truly was a land of secrets. And of course, when Claude had been revealed to the world as the heir to Duke Riegan, he’d brought plenty of secrets of his own with him to Fódlan from Almyra.

“I have no issue with the _taste,”_ Dimitri said to Hapi. _“_ Does this not disturb you?” he asked Cornflower, who was nibbling on her dinner without a care in the world. “Aren’t you uncomfortable eating rats? Aren’t they just larger, hairier mice?”

“Aren’t you uncomfortable eating apes?” Cornflower asked him. “Aren’t they just larger, hairier humans?”

“Yes. Yes, that thought makes me _very_ uncomfortable.”

“Food is food,” Claude told him. “Mice will eat anything edible.”

“And sometimes things that aren’t, if they’re desperate,” Marianne whispered.

“Anything edible, huh?” Dimitri took another hesitant bite, chewing it thoughtfully, then gingerly scraped the meat off his spear and set it aside. “Truthfully, I don’t think I had much of an appetite to begin with. Cornflower, if your burrow is so close by, you should use this opportunity to return to it. Take as much of our food as you can carry back to your children. I would hate for them to become orphans because you followed us into danger.”

“That is sweet of you, Dimitri,” Cornflower said, patting him on the shoulder. She began to pack up. “I wish I had something to give you all as a token of my thanks. If it wasn’t for you and your friends—especially you, Marianne—my children would already be orphans.”

“Oh, it was nothing,” Marianne said. “I’m just glad I could be of some use.”

“The help you’ve given us is token enough of your thanks,” Claude said to the elder mouse. “Let’s hope we meet again under more auspicious circumstances. And somewhere with proper food for a real victory feast!”

With their goodbyes said, Cornflower slipped away into the darkness. Marianne bowed her head and offered a silent prayer to the Goddess for her protection. Claude realized only after she’d left that he still had a ton of questions to ask her about where all these talking mice had come from and briefly considered running after her to ask all of them at once.

Instead, with just the bare minimum of time to rest, he and Dimitri were back on the trail of the Plague Rat, following the stains of its wretched scent deeper into Abyss. Rats had never bothered him so much before; it must have been something to do with being a mouse that made the rat’s odor so uniquely offensive. If the rumors regarding Edelgard’s… _adverse reaction_ toward rats were true, she must have been miserable down here.

* * *

For the second time that night, after what felt like hours carefully maintaining a safe distance from their target, Dimitri found himself and Claude peering at the Plague Rat from afar.

This time, the morbid rat, his warlock retainer, and two rat-drawn wagons each manned by a masked mage, half a dozen mice wielding crude swords, and two rats carrying kitchen cutlery for spears had stopped at what looked like the kind of encampment a traveling army would erect. But Dimitri could tell that there were no soldiers in _this_ camp.

Because all of the dead mice lying on the floor in fresh pools of blood were unarmed.

He couldn’t breathe. He could hardly even _think._ His heart rattled against his ribs, thumping like it was trying to rip itself free from his chest. Bile bit at the back of his throat. The scent of fire stung his nostrils, the odor of blood and shit, the stench of burning flesh. It filled his nose. He could even taste it on his tongue.

Since that horrible day four years ago, he hadn’t been able to smell much of anything, and could barely _taste_ anything either. Except blood and fire. Those always came back. They’d come back before at the dead town, too—just faint traces, but enough to make him feel ill—and now they were back in full force.

The voices came back, too, creeping into his ears like they always did. His father, his stepmother, Glenn, their voices mingling with the dying. Their voices _were_ the dying, drowning in a sea of blood. In his mind’s eye he saw the Tragedy of Duscur again, and the retaliatory massacres and pogroms that had followed, because he had been there _then_ and he was there again _now—_

Claude grabbed him. _“Dimitri, what are you_ doing? _What happened to not being in a risk-taking mood?”_

 _“Where are you, Edelgard?”_ the Plague Rat bellowed, his tail lashing back and forth like a whip as he brandished his serrated blade drenched in fresh blood. _“Are you so vain now that you cannot show your face to me? Or perhaps you’ve become a coward?”_

A battle-scarred mouse stood up amid the others in the camp, clutching a sharpened wooden stick. _“Hey! Told ya, your Edelgard von Whatever ain’t here!”_ he shouted at Myson and the Plague Rat. _“Haven’t ya already bothered us_ once _t’day, you chuds?”_

“If I can make a suggestion,” Myson said to the Plague Rat, “there’s a better way to draw Edelgard out of hiding. Stop killing the adults. Start killing the pups.” He motioned to the swordsmice waiting in the wagon.

Dimitri hated senseless violence. The thought of killing nauseated him. To think of the number of lives he himself had taken in battle filled him with revulsion.

He hated to add to that number. But his spear was already at his side. His muscles were already tensing like coiled springs. To see a village reduced to corpses threw shackles around his mind and spurred his body onward regardless.

Thank the Goddess that kind old mouse lady hadn’t decided to tag along.

“All of you behind me,” he barked, “flank the enemy and close in on both sides! Don’t let a single one escape! _Kill every last one of them!”_

By the time Claude could cry out, _“Dimitri, have you lost your mind?!”_ Dimitri had already traveled half the distance between himself and the Plague Rat.

The Plague Rat whirled around, his ragged black cape swirling around him, and parried the first swing of his spear. The spear’s wooden haft rolled and caught on the serrated edge of the massive steak knife. Dimitri used its weight and reach to push aside the blade, then drove his spear toward a gap in the Plague Rat’s ill-fitting, piecemeal scrap-metal armor with a savage two-handed thrust.

The Plague Rat caught the spear in his paw, gnarled and clawed fingers curling around the shaft just under the blade, and brought it to a dead halt. The blade pricked his flesh, releasing a black trickle of blood, but traveled no farther.

 _“You’re not Edelgard,”_ the beast spat, disappointed.

“I’ll see to it you die disappointed,” Dimitri snarled. He wrenched his spear free. Swings, parries, thrusts—blade met blade again and again, sometimes biting flesh, often kicking up sparks as metal squealed against metal. Chaos whirled around them. Six against eighteen—not good odds, but the odds were never good. Dimitri didn’t focus much on what the others were doing except for the few times their paths intersected with his, though—he only had eyes for the architect of this massacre.

 _“Ignore these interlopers!”_ Myson shouted to his troops. _“Ransack this place! Search every nook and cranny and cut down anyone in your path! She’s here! She_ has _to be!”_

The Plague Rat struck again and again. Dimitri felt the force from the impacts rattle the bones in his arms as he blocked the blade with his spear. _“Out of my way, little mouse!”_ the rat sneered, spittle spewing from his maw underneath his skeletal mask. His artificial eyes glowed like moonlight. _“Run back to your burrow and live another day!”_

There was a flash of silver in the periphery of Dimitri’s vision—he leaped out of the way of a bloodstained fork, its tines tearing four ragged cuts across his chest. One of the other two-legged rats, its eyes glowing an unearthly blue and a cobalt mist pouring from its mouth, bore down on him, flanking him from his left.

 _“Or not,”_ the Plague Rat chuckled as both rats struck. Dimitri’s feet slid across the bloodstained stone tiles as he defended himself from an assault on two fronts. Normally a fight like this was trivial—he let Felix and Sylvain double-team him in sparring sessions all the time just so he could break a sweat—but these rats set his heart fluttering like a hummingbird’s wings, as though they were predators and he was their prey. The fork grazed the side of his head and blood stung his eye; he felt his ear burn as though someone had pressed a match against it.

The feral rat reared its head and gaped its jaw, its long and yellowed incisors dripping with drool. There was a swift, shrill noise that cut through the air and an instant later, a quivering arrow protruded from the rat’s open mouth, its head buried in the back of the rat’s throat. The rat fell to the floor, limp and lifeless.

Claude nocked another arrow to his bow (even without his wits about him, Dimitri couldn’t help but notice how few arrows were left in his quiver) and gave one of those maddeningly cocky winks he was so fond of. Dimitri threw his spear at him. He missed by a whisker; the rat that had been creeping up behind Claude collapsed with the spear’s blood-soaked blade poking out of its back.

As the Plague Rat struck again, Dimitri ripped the fork away from the rat Claude had killed and caught the blade’s scalloped edge in its tines, grinding steel against sterling silver. Dueling with a fork and knife. If he had any room in his heart for any emotion besides fury, he would almost find it amusing.

 _“What’s so important about Edelgard that you have to slaughter innocents to get to her?”_ he spat, batting the Plague Rat’s blade aside. _“What does she matter to murderous vermin like you?!”_

Without so much as a wordless snarl in response, the Plague Rat knocked him off his feet and sent him flying. The fork fell from his grasp and clattered to the floor. A split second stretched into an eternity, and a split second later, Dimitri felt his spine crack against the floor and a flood of pain wash through his skull from back to front. The back of his head felt wet. His ears rang. The world swam and swirled around him like droplets of ink in a glass of water.

As he rolled onto his stomach and tried to force himself up, he saw one of the remaining swordsmice charging at him, crude scrap-metal sword held high overhead. His vision blurred and doubled. One mouse became two. Two became four. Two of the mice socked the other two in the jaw and dropped them to the floor, and the next thing Dimitri knew, Marianne’s face had coalesced in front of him. For an instant, there was a dull, almost feral look in her eyes—and then she was kneeling beside him with his head in her paws, muttering a quick prayer to the Goddess as numbing healing magic flowed into his body. The pain in his head faded and the world stopped swirling and melting.

The Plague Rat was already upon him. Two arrows drove themselves into his shoulder, but he paid them no mind as he raised his wicked blade high overhead and prepared to bring it crashing down. Without thinking, Dimitri shoved Marianne out of the way and threw up his forearm to block the blow. The blade cut through his flesh like a knife through rare steak, chewing through muscle and tendon. The pain of the scalloped edge of the knife sliding downward, sawing a shallow gash into his bone, was white-hot, like staring into the sun.

 _“You’re no Edelgard,”_ the Plague Rat hissed, _“but you’re good practice! I think I’ll throw your corpse at her feet…”_

The blade pressed down deeper, pushing Dimitri’s half-bisected forearm with it. Blood stained his golden fur a crimson he couldn’t see—to his eyes, it was just a murky yellow-gray so dark it was nearly black. He felt the blade push gently against his face, tracing a line up his snout from the tip of his nose to his forehead, as he struggled with all his might to hold it back and keep it from doing anything more than break the skin. The blade filled his vision, a blurry black mass splitting the world into left and right, with one of the Plague Rat’s glowing eyes on either side.

If his strength faltered, if the burning muscles in his shoulder gave way, the Plague Rat would cleave him in twain—Dimitri was finally outmatched in strength. He could only pray his boundless stamina would remain so.

A faint spark of lucidity crept back into his mind in spite of the pain. Was this how he would die? Split down the middle by a steak knife? His stepmother, his father, Glenn… how would he avenge their wailing spirits when he himself was among them?

A burst of black miasma struck the Plague Rat in the side of his head, waves of dark magic crashing against the scarred contours of his skull helmet. Disoriented for a split second, his grip loosened and strength failed; Dimitri felt the blade slide away from his arm, drawing new screams and howls of pain from his severed nerves. As the Plague Rat reeled, Balthus’ fist slammed into the side of his head at the exact spot where the blast of magic had struck. A spiderweb of cracks grew across the side of the skull, flecks of bone chips flying through the air.

Enraged, the Plague Rat slapped Balthus aside with the flat of his blade and turned on Dimitri—too late. Dimitri picked up the fork he’d dropped, wielding the makeshift spear one-handed as his ruined right arm hung limp at his side, and buried it in the Plague Rat’s belly with all his might, then stabbed again, and again, and again. He leaped up, planted his feet on the fork’s handle as his monstrous foe fell, and tackled him, blood from his wounds spilling on the Plague Rat’s death’s-head mask.

Dimitri grappled with the beast, kicking, scratching, biting, like a beast; he tasted blood and fire filling his mouth as he sank his teeth into the Plague Rat’s flesh. They rolled across the floor, snarling and spitting at each other, a wheel of fur and fangs and claws. Dimitri ended up on top, and with a ragged scream, he buried his fist in the hollow of the Plague Rat’s throat as deep as it would go.

The Plague Rat’s chest began to quiver; he began to laugh a low, slow, hoarse laugh. Dimitri pressed his fist deeper into his throat to silence him. _“Foolish little rodent,”_ the rat gasped as Dimitri choked the life out of him. _“The body is temporary… the spirit is eternal. Didn’t they teach you that… at church?”_

 _“Just go to hell already!”_ Dimitri cried out, the venom in his words burning his throat.

The Plague Rat’s glowing eyes flashed with a brilliant, star-shaped light; the next thing Dimitri knew, the left side of his face was awash with searing flames and the Plague Rat’s massive, meaty paw was clamped around his neck, claws ripping into his flesh as the beast’s grip crushed his windpipe. He felt the world spin around him and his feet leave the floor, dark mist crowding out his vision as he struggled to suck air through his constricting throat. The world fell away; the Plague Rat’s morbid, monstrous visage fell to the end of a long black tunnel.

Visions floated in his mind’s eye—the only eye he had left to see clearly with. Visions of her lilac eyes, her chestnut hair, the stern and commanding tone in her voice when she’d taught him to dance all those years ago, the dagger he’d given her as a parting gift before she’d left Fhirdiad to return to the Empire.

_Cut your own path, El. To the future you dreamed of._

Was this where his path ended? He felt the cold hands of ghosts laying on his body, ready to drag him to the eternal flames. He weakly scrabbled against the Plague Rat’s wrist, his claws ripping shallow gashes in his foe’s scarred and scabrous flesh. His lungs burned, his heart fluttered; the mad thrashings of his legs and tail grew weaker until his body fell still.

 _“What… does a beast like you…”_ Dimitri gasped with the last of his breath, _“want with El…?”_

The Plague Rat’s grip only grew tighter. _“What are you to her,”_ he bellowed, enraged further, _“that you_ dare _call her that?”_

An arrow ran through the side of his neck and burst out the other side in a shower of gore. The Plague Rat’s grip faltered and Dimitri fell to the floor, greedily gasping for air as Claude fired the last of his arrows into the monster’s throat. Wheezing and hissing, the Plague Rat stumbled backward, scrabbling at the two arrows lodged in an X shape through his neck and ripping them out.

“Wow. Cornflower was right…” Claude gasped, perturbed. Blood matted his hair and fur; fear widened his eyes. His legs buckled under his weight, his body as drained of strength as his quiver was of arrows. “This thing just… doesn’t want to die…”

 _“Plague Rat! That’s enough!”_ Myson called out, appearing at the beast’s side in a flash of blue light. To say he looked worse for the wear was an understatement—his peaked warlock’s hat was a charred mess that only resembled a hat in that it was sitting atop his head, his fur was soaked with his own blood, and one ear had been reduced to a ragged stub. Dimitri’s classmates had done a number on him while he’d been preoccupied with the Plague Rat. “Edelgard is no longer here. But we’ve found something else that is of interest. I’ve already secured it; it’s time to leave now.”

All the Plague Rat could do was wordlessly gasp for breath, his chest heaving fruitlessly as air whistled through the holes in his throat. He fell to his knees, blood spurting in streams from his neck like a fountain and oozing from dozens of puncture wounds littering his underbelly. He seemed on death’s door, yet still clung to life.

Dimitri forced himself to his feet, battered and bloody. He could hardly see straight anymore. Myson caught sight of him and began to laugh. _“Prince Dimitri Blaiddyd?_ Is that _you?”_ His gaze turned to Claude. “And you must be the Riegan boy.”

“My friends here call me Claude.” As weak and feeble as he was, Claude raised his bow again and reached over his shoulder to draw another arrow. “But I guess ‘Riegan boy’ will do for you—” He stopped short upon realizing that his quiver was empty. “Oh, shit,” he muttered.

Myson placed his paw on the Plague Rat’s bloodstained flank and in a flash of blue-white light, both of them disappeared. Dimitri took two shaky, staggering steps toward where the two fiends had stood just a moment ago, felt his legs give way beneath him, and passed out as the floor rushed up to meet him.

* * *

Last night, Edelgard had fallen asleep first; Bernadetta had barely held onto consciousness long enough for Matthias and Wesper to return with news of a safer place they’d found to spend the night in than an exposed crack in a wall—namely, the bottom drawer of a dilapidated wooden chest of drawers that had had a hole cut out of its front and a ragged curtain draped over the hole. She’d barely settled down before all but collapsing into a pile of dusty rags serving as makeshift mattress and blankets, the aches in every muscle dulling until she couldn’t feel anything at all.

She woke up with her snout buried in a pillow. A strange pillow: a fuzzy one, lit by warmth from within, and gently rising in time with—

It wasn’t a pillow. With dawning horror, she realized what she was _really_ sleeping on.

_It was Edelgard’s chest._

She thanked the Goddess they were both mice right now, because if they were _human,_ then she would have been nuzzling Edelgard’s—

Before she could pull away, an apology ready to fly off her tongue like an arrow from a longbow, she felt Edelgard’s paw slip under her ragged cloak and gently trace the curve of her spine; and even though frantic apologies came so naturally to her, she managed to completely forget what she’d been about to say.

“Good morning,” Edelgard said to her. “If it _is_ morning, that is. I suppose there’s no way to tell down here, is there?”

“Um…”

“I hope you don’t mind.” She kept stroking Bernadetta’s back as though she were one of the monastery’s many cats. “I woke up not too long ago and needed something to soothe my nerves…”

“H-Happy to be of service?”

“You’d seemed distressed as well. I wanted to help,” she said. “Oh, but I can stop if you’d like.”

“No! I-I mean…” Bernadetta sighed. She wasn’t sure what she wanted. It would just be another game of push-and-pull between her and Edelgard, wouldn’t it? Edelgard would pull her in with sweet words and sympathy and—her paw slipped down her back again and it felt so good that she shivered— _this,_ but then it would only be a matter of time before her mood soured again and she pushed her away. How many more times could Edelgard lose her temper and snap at her before she stopped trying to expect anything better from her?

“I don’t know,” she said, struggling to find the words to describe the thoughts circling her head. “I just don’t know.”

“I suppose you’re still afraid of me.”

“Maybe a little,” she admitted.

There were gulfs between their words, long stretches of silence, as though they were playing a high-stakes game of chess and had to take the time to ponder each and every move, and in those gulfs all Edelgard did was stroke her fur with careful, practiced gentleness, tracing her spine, drawing lazy, loose circles across her shoulders, raking clawed fingertips softly across the nape of her neck.

“This would be quite awkward if we were human,” Edelgard mused, “wouldn’t it be?”

“Yeah…”

She stopped petting her. “Now that you’re awake, though, I have something to confess to you, Bernadetta.”

Bernadetta braced herself and prepared for the worst. Here it came…

“Since we came down here, I’ve been… missing something. It was something I’ve been long prepared to sacrifice on the altar of my ambitions, but instead, it’s been ripped from my grasp and I have gained nothing in return. Without it, I feel… fragile. Weak. It takes all my strength to hold myself together, and when that strength fails, even for a moment… I break. I can hardly recognize myself.”

Relieved, Bernadetta nodded. She had trouble holding herself together sometimes, too. Everyone knew her as the quiet, reserved recluse who could go entire days without speaking so much as a word to anybody, but when she was pushed beyond her limits, that was when she would explode into panicked hysterics, shouting at the top of her lungs the way she’d always kicked and screamed whenever her father had tried to drag her out of her bedroom. “We really are the same, huh?”

“Yes… Yes, I suppose. That is why… I will try harder from now on. In fact, I promise, as an oath upon the Hresvelg bloodline, that I shall never again raise my voice in anger against you. I’m sorry for my behavior yesterday.”

Bernadetta lifted her head. Her eyes met Edelgard’s. Usually, the princess’ eyes were cold and hard, gleaming with a stern and serious light. But now they were softer and rueful—oddly earnest—and projected a contrite face. They were trustworthy eyes. “Y-You mean it?”

She felt Edelgard’s paw slip across her snout, fingers ghosting down her chin and nestling gently in the hollow of her throat for a blissful instant before slipping away.

“I do,” Edelgard said.

Bernadetta smiled, and before she could stop herself, she said, “That didn’t sound like an apology befitting a princess.”

Edelgard let out a sharp, flustered laugh. “Well, my conduct has hardly been befitting a princess, either, so it balances out.” She tousled Bernadetta’s hair. “I’m not used to asking for forgiveness. I usually simply take it. But… do you?”

“Do I what?”

“Forgive me.”

“Oh. Um…” Bernadetta nestled her cheek on Edelgard’s shoulder. Edelgard’s fur was as soft and glossy as the silk of her cloak—the parts that weren’t crusted with dried blood, that was. “I might if you keep petting me.”

“Is that extortion?” Edelgard scratched behind her ear. “Well, aren’t _you_ a bold one, Bernadetta.”

 _“Extortion?_ No, no, I didn’t mean it; I forgive you! No strings attached!”

“Oh, never you mind. That’s an easy deal for me to agree to.”

Edelgard kept petting her. Bernadetta felt like she was melting; the soothing, calming motion of Edelgard’s claws gently raking her skin and the warmth of her body under hers was a balm against every worry in her head.

“I guess I should apologize, too,” Bernadetta said. “I’m sorry for freaking out when you told me what… what they did to you. I thought you were mocking me…”

“True, your torture was nothing like mine,” Edelgard said to her, “but it was still torture. And our pains, though different, still stem from the same source—the world’s mad obsession with bloodlines and Crests. I had no intention of belittling your pain.”

“I know. It’s just… hard to be rational sometimes. I wish I could be more like you.”

“Even _I_ lose my sense of reason sometimes. I suppose I just do a better job of hiding it than you.” Edelgard laughed. “Hah. If only Hubert could see me now.” She sat up and let Bernadetta’s head rest in her lap. “He’s been trying to cure my phobia for _years._ To think that three days ago I was afraid to even _look_ at you…”

“And now?”

“If anything, I feel _safe_ around you. In fact, last night, I felt…”

There was an odd look in her eyes, a faraway look, wistful and almost nostalgic.

“I have a request of you, Bernadetta—or would you prefer if I called you ‘Bernie’ or ‘Bern?’”

Bernadetta shrugged. “Either’s fine.”

“When we’re alone, I’d—” Edelgard smiled, but her eyes looked nervous. “I, er… Between the two of us— _just_ between the two of us—I think I’d prefer if you called me ‘El.’”

“O-Okay, uh… E—El?” It felt strange, almost _perverse,_ to use a nickname like that for the future emperor, but there was also something thrilling and exhilarating about it.

Edelgard’s smile turned fragile and wobbly.

“Oh, uh… i-if it makes you feel bad, never mind—”

“No, no.” She shook her head. “No, it is fine. I just… I only ever see that name now in letters from my father. I haven’t heard it for over half a year.”

“The—The _Emperor_ calls you that?”

“Yes, but he picked it up from my youngest sister, Hedwig. She had a hard time with my name. With everyone’s name. She had a s-speech impediment a-and—” Her voice cracked. She paused and took a deep breath.

“El…”

“Excuse me. You write, don’t you?” Edelgard asked, sharpening her voice as she hurriedly rushed to a new topic. “I overheard Sylvain praising your work on the night of the… victory celebration.”

“Well—i-if he really _liked_ it and wasn’t just trying to humiliate me, then he just has bad taste.”

“I won’t pry. I suppose everything I’ve told you about myself will make for a fantastic story one day.”

“Yes, I—I think it could. There’s drama, tragedy, double-crossing, trauma—”

“Entirely fictional, of course.”

“Yes, of course.”

“And any resemblance to any real persons, living or dead, or historical events is wholly unintentional and utterly coincidental, if anybody asks.”

“Definitely.”

Edelgard leaned in closer until the tip of her snout just barely pressed against Bernadetta’s, her voice dropping nearly to a whisper as her breath ruffled Bernadetta’s whiskers. Bernadetta felt her heart race, her brain boil with anticipation—but anticipation of _what?_ “And—this is very important—in this story, in her ruthless and relentless pursuit of justice, the brave heroine meets—”

 _“Oh, you’re awake!”_ Matthias exclaimed as he poked his head through the curtain into the drawer.

“Matthias!” Bernadetta shot up to her feet. “Uh… Y-You, um…”

“You should give advance warning before you barge into a girl’s bedroom,” Edelgard sternly told him, pressing a ragged blanket to her chest as though to cover herself up, even though her fur did a good enough job of that.

“You didn’t hear me knock? I guess I’ll knock louder next time,” he said, climbing into the drawer. “So, how’d you two sleep? I haven’t! Yuri and Constance showed me around the place; it’s amazing! It’s not—It’s not the cities, I mean, but to think that mice could live like this down here! Everyone’s just so… well, um, no one’s really _happy_ about being a mouse due to the whole, well, they’re all meant to be humans, but they’re all well-fed and there aren’t any rats trying to kill them and—and here’s the best part! When the chuds make trouble, they actually fight back!”

Edelgard crossed her arms. “Ah. So _that’s_ what you’ve been doing wrong.”

“Anyway, Edelgard, Constance wants to talk to you. She kept saying things about a house called Nuvelle, which must be a pretty big and important house. Have you been there?”

“Nuvelle…” There was a glint of recognition in Edelgard’s eyes as she pondered the name. “As in ‘von Nuvelle?’”

Bernadetta recognized the name, too, but only vaguely. Hadn’t House Nuvelle been one of the Empire’s noble bloodlines? But unlike the surnames of her classmates, Nuvelle rang no bells.

Matthias shrugged. “I dunno. You humans have too many names. Isn’t one enough? I mean, imagine if _I_ had three names. And why do you all have ‘Von’ in the middle?”

“I’ll explain later,” Edelgard said. “Where is Constance?”

“Right outside waiting for us. I’ll crash here if you don’t mind.” Matthias yawned. “I’m sleepy.”

As Edelgard and Bernadetta climbed out of the drawer, they heard a muffled thump behind them. Edelgard still used her axe to prop herself up, keeping it by her side like a cane—it was no wonder, considering how utterly drained she’d been last night. Restful as her sleep had been (aside from some stressful dreams about home, but that was simply normal to her), Bernadetta’s feet still ached from all the running she’d done, all the fighting notwithstanding.

Constance was, just as Matthias had said, right outside the drawer waiting for them, her paws clasped expectantly behind her back. At the sight of Edelgard, she gave a curt, polite bow. “Good morning to you, Your Highness. And to you, miss…”

“I’m sorry about your bat,” Bernadetta blurted out.

“Bruce? Oh, he’s right as rain now!” Constance let out a haughty laugh. For a mouse, her smile, as well as her face, was sharp and foxlike. “That’s all water under the bridge. Now, Lady Edelgard, I’m sure you’re well aware of the tragedy that befell House Nuvelle…”

“Yes, of course. A shame it had to happen to such a family.”

“An utter shame! Ruination of the greatest masters of spellcraft Adrestia, no, all of _Fódlan_ has ever known! Can you stomach the injustice, Lady Edelgard?”

Bernadetta had no idea what Constance and Edelgard were talking about.

“Not in the slightest. I have great sympathy for House Nuvelle,” Edelgard said to Constance. “After all, yours was one of the few great noble families to side with my father in the insurrection. For that, you have my thanks.” Her tone was measured, as it always was when discussing matters like this, so there was no way to tell whether or not she was speaking honestly. Bernadetta could all but see the clockwork moving behind her face. She was already pondering what use Constance could be to her and what she would have to say to _keep_ her useful. Did she do that with _everyone?_ Bernadetta wondered. Did she do that with _her?_

“I’m happy you see things my way,” Constance said. “I’m sure someone of your intelligence can imagine…”

Bernadetta tuned their voices out as her thoughts consumed her head. _Edelgard lies._ She almost didn’t want to remember that, but couldn’t help herself. Edelgard had _told_ her just as much—she said what she needed to say to get what she needed from people. There was no way of _really_ knowing what was the truth and what wasn’t with her. Or had _that_ been a lie? Had Edelgard been lying about lying? Or had she been lying about lying about lying?

Bernadetta shook her head as though to shake away all those thoughts. She could trust Edelgard to be honest to _her._ The dark past she had laid bare wasn’t a lie. The way she had leaped to her defense time and time again wasn’t a lie. The thing about anxiety was that most of your thoughts were so _stupid,_ and yet you couldn’t stop thinking them.

“…for one, aim to be Fódlan's foremost expert in transmutation magic,” Constance was saying while Bernadetta ruminated, “and my mastery shall surely revolutionize the world and restore House Nuvelle to its former glory and more!”

“Transmutation magic?” Edelgard gasped, her ears _literally_ perking up. “Is there any way you could restore our human forms?”

“I’m afraid transmutation magic is a step below polymorphic magic,” Constance admitted, her face falling. “A very _big_ step. And polymorphic magic alone is fairly limited. It takes an incredible amount of energy, or barring that, a magic circle bigger than a house, to transform _one_ person! The only way to make such an ungainly spell _useful_ is to cast it on a specific herbal concoction that will carry the magic, and _that_ in itself is almost impossible to brew due to how rare, not to mention _illegal,_ most of the ingredients are!”

That, Bernadetta thought, was a _very_ long way to say ‘no.’

“Actually, transmutation magic is _far_ more versatile and useful, even if it cannot, say, turn a man into a mouse or vise versa. It is simpler to cast, requires far less material overhead, and—oh, _this_ is exciting. My latest major breakthrough came just a few days ago, when I transmuted water that was contaminated by _polymorphus muridae!”_

“You made the water clean?” Bernadetta asked.

“Not exactly,” Constance admitted, drawing her ragged blue shawl around her shoulders. “I transmuted the water into piping hot bergamot tea… that was contaminated by _polymorphus muridae._ Anyway, as I was saying about my research—” Constance stopped in mid-sentence, wrinkled her nose, and grimaced. “Er, Lady Edelgard… I would love to continue our conversation, but first—by any chance, would you and your friend care for a bath?”

* * *

A hot bath couldn’t stop Edelgard from smelling like a mouse, but at least it could stop her from smelling like dirt and blood, for which she was eternally grateful. She was even _more_ grateful for the transmutation magic Constance had performed on the bathwater to make it smell so strongly of lilac.

Of course, there weren’t any mouse-sized bathtubs or washbasins in Yuri’s little shantytown for fugitives and criminals, but a ceramic bowl filled with warm water more than sufficed. Edelgard climbed in and sank into the water up to her neck, bracing her arms against the lip of the bowl to keep herself from sinking entirely, and let the water wrap itself around her in an all-encompassing embrace, pressing gently against every lingering ache in her body.

She felt almost _human_ again, in spite of the fur, the tail (which had to admit that she _was_ starting to get used to having), the whiskers, the teeth, _et cetera_. It shouldn’t have entirely caught her by surprise what a difference cleanliness made—she hadn’t felt human in the dungeon all those years ago, either—and yet it did.

Bernadetta stared down at the rippling surface of the water, nervously clutching at her ragged, filthy black cloak, and let out an anxious, wistful sigh.

“No need to wait your turn,” Edelgard told her. “There’s room enough for both of us. And if the water gets cold, I’ll have to promise another favor to Constance to have it heated again.” Constance had already made her kneel before her and proclaim the superiority of House Nuvelle’s spellcraft for the privilege of having this bath drawn in the first place, and Edelgard was not interested in finding out how else she would have to debase herself for any more favors. “Just pretend I’m not here, if it helps.”

Bernadetta gulped. “Well… h-here goes,” she mumbled, untying her cloak from around her neck and gingerly climbing over the edge of the bowl.

She slipped and fell in head over heels with a surprised yelp, disturbing the bath’s placid surface and splashing Edelgard in the face. Her head popped up above the water and she coughed and sputtered, soaked thoroughly from tip to tail. “I-I’m so sorry, Edelgard!” she choked out.

“Could you get out and do that again?” Edelgard asked, turning the other cheek. She felt warmer all of a sudden, and she wasn’t sure it was just the water. “I think you missed a spot.”

Bernadetta let out a nervous laugh. “I-It won’t happen again…”

“No, really. I can’t swim, so if I put my head under, I might drown.”

“The water just barely comes up to our necks,” she pointed out.

“True as that may be, in our precarious situation, why take the risk?”

Bernadetta stared dumbly at Edelgard. Edelgard stared dumbly back at her. They both laughed.

“I’m glad it’s you with me down here, Bernie,” Edelgard said as Bernadetta settled into the bath, “and not any of the other Black Eagles.”

Bernadetta shook her head. With her fur and messy mop of hair slicked down, she looked far thinner than before, almost emaciated. Water droplets hung from the tips of her whiskers like dew on grass. “Come on. You can’t be serious.”

“No, I mean it. Imagine what I’d have to go through if Ferdinand had ended up in your place like Hubert had intended.” She cleared her throat and put on her best imitation of the carrot-haired young man. “‘Look at me, Lady Edelgard! I am so far superior than you when it comes to being a mouse! Behold my glossy fur and immaculate whiskers! And look what I can do with my tail!’”

Bernadetta giggled.

“Or Hubert. He may be my right hand, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t annoy me sometimes. He would say, ‘There is no time for such frivolities as baths or sleeping, Lady Edelgard. We shan’t delay a single minute. I shall cut a bloody path to the surface for you.’”

Edelgard coughed. Imitating Hubert’s voice was rougher on her throat than she’d expected.

“Isn’t that exactly what you want, though?”

“Well, yes,” she admitted. “But I must say, I’m glad that we can spend a few hours actually wringing some meager sense of enjoyment out of our miserable situation.”

“Hmm…” Bernadetta slumped against the side of the bowl. “What about Caspar?”

“I’d be deaf within a day.”

“Linhardt?”

“He’d be no help at all. I’d be dragging his narcoleptic carcass like a sack of flour all the way back to the surface, and he’d spend every waking moment whining about how he’d rather be asleep.”

“But what about Petra or Dorothea? They’re nice, and strong, and not annoying at all…”

Edelgard wasn’t exactly sure what to say to that, because in all honesty, she _would_ be much better off having one of them down here by her side. “Well,” she began after a long pause, “because in spite of—because I like having you down here.”

Bernadetta slumped even further downward, the bathwater rising just past her chin. “What’s that supposed to mean?” she mumbled. The water bubbled up around her mouth.

“I find I can confide in you in a way I cannot with anyone else. The only people I have told more about my past than you are Hubert and my father… and that was only because they lived through those days, too. And Byleth, as well. I have enrolled you in an exclusive club, though I must say the membership benefits may be questionable.”

Bernadetta laughed.

“Bernie, do you remember what I said to you a few days ago? Before you started turning into a mouse?”

“Huh? A-About killing that guy?”

“About the society we live in. A society that makes beasts out of men. A society that condemns people to walk paths that lead only to despair. A society that controls men’s lives and commands their fates.”

“Um… okay. I-I kinda got that, but I was also kinda busy freaking out over turning into a mouse, s-so… I guess…”

“For our whole lives, a higher power has controlled our destinies. Those who slither in the dark tried to shape me into their perfect emperor. Your father tried to shape you into a perfect wife. We were both given burdens we didn’t ask for which hurt us both more than we could bear, and even now, these people are still trying to force us onto the paths they choose. Even now, we’ve been forced to take the shapes they desire against our will.”

Edelgard reached out, slipped a finger under Bernadetta’s chin, and lifted her head. Their eyes met. She stared into Bernadetta’s sad gray eyes. “Some people say that fate is as inescapable as the ground we’re tethered to. Our souls are weighed down by gravity, but even so, we both still yearn to fly. So I ask you, Bern… do you want to break free of your father’s influence? Do you… want to fly with me?”

She had to admit, being a mouse sitting in a bowl full of water, _literally_ looking like a drowned (ugh) rat, took some of the gravitas out of her rhetoric. She _already_ felt embarrassed about the ‘do you want to fly with me’ part. She really wasn’t bringing her A-game in this state.

Bernadetta looked away. “Well… I’ve always wished I could be more like you…”

“Crippling fear of rats notwithstanding, I’m sure.”

“I just don’t know if I can trust you.”

“Is that so?” Edelgard couldn’t say she was surprised. She’d done enough talking out of both sides of her mouth around her. “Then close your eyes.”

“Oh, um…” Bernadetta closed her eyes. “I-Is this going to be some sort of trust-building exercise? Like, I’ll fall backward, and then you’ll catch me? What if you miss? Wh—”

Edelgard took a hunk of soap from the edge of the makeshift bathtub and started scrubbing her cheek. “Something like that. Keep your eyes closed; the soap will sting.” She worked the soap into a frothy lather, working it into every strand of fur and hair from the neck up. “And hold your breath.”

Bernadetta took a deep breath, her chest swelling. Edelgard planted her palm against the back of her head. “I’m going to submerge you. Are you ready?”

“Um… I-I think I can take it from here, actually…”

“I’ll count to three before I do it. And I will hold you down for no more than five seconds.”

Bernadetta took another breath and held it. Edelgard counted to three, then pressed her paw downward, bending her neck and pushing her head underwater. As Bernadetta’s hair floated in a halo around her head, Edelgard rinsed away the soap as quickly as she could, counting under her breath the passage of each second, and pulled her back up out of the water at the exact moment _five_ slipped from her tongue. “Now open your eyes and breathe.”

Slowly, gingerly, as though expecting the worst, Bernadetta cracked open her eyelids, blinked as though she’d just stared at the sun, and exhaled, gratefully gulping down deep, harried breaths as though to make up for lost time. Her shoulders quaked. Rivulets of water trickled and dripped down her fur.

“Is something wrong?” Edelgard asked, wrapping her arm around her back. “I didn’t frighten you, did I?”

Bernadetta shook her head. Droplets of water sprayed everywhere. “No, no, I—I just… My father never counted…”

“I see.” Edelgard pressed the hunk of soap into her palm. Maybe this hadn’t been the best idea for a trust exercise. “I assume you’d prefer to do the rest yourself?”

Although she couldn’t really see it underneath all that fur (and besides, she was colorblind), she could tell from the way Bernadetta squirmed that her face was probably beet-red. “Y-Yes, of course!” she squeaked, snatching the soap out of her paw and scuttling to the far end of the bowl (which, admittedly, wasn’t very far away).

“I’ll turn around, if it helps,” Edelgard said, leaning against the side of the bowl and opting to stare off into the distance at the fading, peeling wallpaper.

“So, um… Edelgard… uh, I mean, _El…”_ Bernadetta began.

Edelgard sighed. Hearing that name made her heart ache, but not the way the rest of her body ached. The nostalgia it carried with it was bittersweet, but it was the sweetness that settled in her chest more than the bitterness.

“I think… the reason I’m afraid of other people is because… well… no matter how nice they are to me, I’m afraid that deep down they’re just like my father. That when I least expect it, they’ll take off the mask and tear me apart. That’s why I ran away yesterday. Were you… like that? After the dungeon?”

“Oh, yes. I was afraid of my own shadow.”

“How did you get over it?”

“Well, for starters… Hubert decided he’d be paranoid enough for the both of us.”

“And that was enough?”

Edelgard shrugged. “It helped. But the enemy we’re facing behooves a healthy sense of paranoia. They can make themselves look like anybody. Their disguises are perfect. They even have agents in this very monastery who have gone years without the slightest bit of suspicion from the church. Their leader killed my uncle and took his face and I never knew the difference until he chained me to a wall. Trust is a luxury even a princess cannot always afford.”

“So you can’t trust people either… What about our classmates?”

“I was wary at first. But Hubert and I have warmed up to them. Within reason.”

“Our teacher?”

Edelgard smiled. She _wanted_ to trust Byleth far more than she knew she should. She knew that Byleth was close to the church in mysterious ways, but also knew that she wasn’t some dogma-blinded righteous idiot like the Knights of Seiros. She was a free agent, a chess piece neither side seemed to fully know what to do with, and that made her both _more_ trustworthy and _less._ Hubert kept cautioning her not to get her hopes up. But one look into those piercing steel-gray eyes made her desperately hope that in the looming war she planned to wage against the Church of Seiros, Byleth would be her staunchest ally.

She wanted to say, ‘It’s complicated,’ but instead, she just said, “Yes.”

“…Me?” Bernadetta asked.

“Absolutely. We are kindred spirits.”

“But I’m so unreliable… a-and I lie all the time! Like all those times I’ve said I couldn’t come to lectures because I was sick—I actually j-just wanted to stay in my room and work on my embroidery! A-And I’m just as likely to run away as I am to help…”

“No, I don’t think that’s true. I think I’m right to trust you, Bernie.”

“Really?”

“Yes. Why don’t I give you an opportunity to prove it?”

“How?”

“Well, I’ll close my eyes, you’ll count to three…”

“Oh. Y-You want me to…”

“Go ahead. It’s only fair.” Edelgard turned around and closed her eyes. “I’m ready.”

She felt the bathwater ripple around her as Bernadetta crept up to her, and then the smooth, slippery sensation of soap sliding against her face. She didn’t make a habit of being waited on, unlike most nobles who refused out of principle to do anything they could have a servant do instead—partly because she valued her independence, partly because of the way her enemies could abuse such indulgence.

“So… I just rub this soap into your hair, too?”

“Normally, I’d use a special soap mixed with lavender and rosemary oil for shine and volume, but this will do.”

Bernadetta set to work on her hair. “I probably can’t do this as well as you can…”

Edelgard chuckled. “Don’t worry; my standards aren’t very high right now.”

“Mmm. Okay. Um… take a deep breath, and then on three, I guess.”

“Five seconds?”

“Uh-huh.”

Edelgard nodded, then filled her lungs until her chest ached. She felt Bernadetta’s palm press against the back of her head…

In spite of herself, a knot of worry twisted itself in her gut. It wasn’t like she was terrified of bodies of water in general. Rivers, ponds, and lakes didn’t bother her, and certainly not bathtubs. But she’d made herself helpless here. She was at Bernadetta’s mercy.

_“One…”_

The trapped air started burning in her lungs. She was really giving this girl an opportunity to drown her. If it was all a long con, if Bernadetta was one of _them—_

_“Two…”_

No. That was silly. Ridiculous. She’d depended on Bernadetta enough times already. Her trust in the girl should have been absolute. Surely she could extend to her the same trust she showed Hubert.

_“Th-Three?”_

Edelgard tensed up and steeled herself as Bernadetta pressed down and pushed her under the water.

All sound fell away. Water pressed against her from all directions, faint currents circling her like a constrictor snake lazily wrapping itself around its prey. With the water filling her ears and muffling the sound of Bernadetta counting under her breath to a dull throb, Edelgard counted the seconds herself.

Two seconds passed.

Edelgard feared the ocean in particular because it was dark, deep, and vast. It was an endless, crushing abyss as dark and as stifling as a grave and threatened to be just as inescapable. But she could drown anywhere. With her eyes closed and Bernadetta’s paw holding her down, the bottom of this tiny improvised bathtub could just as easily be the still and silent seafloor, where she would perish alongside the ancient wrecks of storm-wracked ships.

Three seconds passed.

Her lungs were already burning. She hadn’t taken enough air down with her. She tried to calm herself. If she started fighting or thrashing or forcing herself up to the surface, the trust-building exercise would be ruined. Surely Bernadetta would let her back up after five seconds.

Four seconds passed.

Each one felt like an eternity. Her heart pounded. The air filling her lungs tried to fight its way up her throat and out of her mouth. She needed to breathe. How much longer could one second last? One second. Just one more second—

At five seconds on the dot, Bernadetta’s grip loosened and Edelgard ripped herself free of the water, panting and gasping for breath as though to make up for lost time. Her shoulders quaked. Rivulets of water trickled and dripped down her fur. That was a more harrowing experience than she’d expected.

 _“Oh, no! I-I counted too slow, didn’t I? I’m so s-sorry, it won’t happen again…”_ Bernadetta stammered.

“No, no,” Edelgard said as she caught her breath. The air was cold against her fur now. “You were on time; I was counting too. I just didn’t take a deep enough breath. I think… this was not the most well-thought-out trust-building exercise. Please accept my apology.”

“No, no, I was fine. Totally fine. It didn’t bother me at all,” Bernadetta said, obviously lying.

“Are you certain? If I’ve caused you any distress…”

“Well, um…” Bernadetta kneaded her paws. “Maybe… don’t try that trust-building exercise? Like… ever again?”

“Duly noted. Thank you, Bernie.” Edelgard patted her on her sopping wet head. “It seems I still have quite a lot to learn. I hope you’ll be as patient with me as our professor is. Now, if I could have the soap…”

“Oh! Y-Yes, of course,” Bernadetta said, pressing the somewhat-diminished hunk of soap into her paw and turning her back.

Edelgard finished washing herself, set the soap aside, and climbed out of the bowl, drying herself off with half of a rough, threadbare washcloth. Bernadetta did the same.

“Wow,” Bernadetta said, looking back at the vacant bowl. The water left in the tub was grayish and almost opaque, its surface dotted with foamy white islands. “We really needed that.” She grabbed her ragged cloak up off the floor and tied it around her neck. “Wish we didn’t have to just put the same old clothes back on, though… I mean, I guess we could wash them, but what would we wear in the meantime?”

Edelgard picked up her cloak. It was in an even sorrier state than when she’d first ripped it off her uniform’s silk cape—ripped, torn, ragged around every edge, dotted with holes, and crusted with dirt and dried blood. It was an ugly dark grayish-chartreuse color, the bloodstains even darker and uglier; Edelgard felt her heart ache that she couldn’t see the cloak’s brilliant red color anymore. Colorblindness was one of the most trivial difficulties about being a mouse, but somehow, it hit harder than anything else.

The scent of blood and filth staining the cloak was even less bearable now that Edelgard had actually gotten clean for the first time in three days, and beneath that scent was the scent of mouse. But beneath all that, she could smell something else. Something familiar, though she couldn’t describe it in words. But she knew that it was _her_ scent—the scent of her humanity, the only real reminder she still had of what she was _supposed_ to be.

A human. A princess. A savior.

She hung the cloak over her shoulders and tied it around her neck. “So, Bernie… I’ll extend my offer to you again. Do you want to escape your father’s ‘gravity?’”

Bernadetta smiled. “If you’re offering, I guess. I—I really do admire you, and I want to like you—I mean, I _do,_ I _do_ like you, really… it’s just that I need to move past how my father treated me.”

“I understand.” Edelgard took her paw, threading their fingers together and squeezing until their palms pressed together. “I want to help you.”

She took her axe, and Bernadetta her bow, and they set out together.

Though she didn’t want to hope, Edelgard had a feeling that the end of her trials down here was close at hand—it wouldn’t be remiss to expect there to be a passage to the surface close to this settlement. After all, they had to be getting their food and supplies from _somewhere._ Bread required wheat, yeast, and flour, after all, and none of those things were naturally occurring in a city hidden from the sun.

Her time down here exiled to the darkness could _end._ She would still be a mouse—unless Hubert had recovered the antidote, although she was sure he had by now—but at least she would be on the surface where she belonged, where Hubert and Byleth could watch over her and the threat of the Plague Rat and other malcontents could fade to a distant memory. She’d only ever been so happy about the prospect of seeing sunlight again once before in her life. She’d almost forgotten that sense of elation…

_“Edelgard!”_

Yuri’s voice rang through the wide expanse of the settlement’s now-oversize cobblestone streets. He strode up to her and Bernadetta from behind with the languid grace of a river in spring, circling around them to face them. “My, my, you two look like you’re in a hurry.”

Bernadetta froze, her whiskers quivering, her eyes wide enough that Edelgard could see their whites. “O-Oh, h—hi, Yuri…” She looked like she was about to faint.

Edelgard gave her paw a firm, reassuring squeeze. “Lord Yuri of the Ashen Wolves. Thank you for your hospitality.”

“Don’t mention it,” Yuri said, idly examining his claws. “Well, _do,_ actually. I could have easily left you to fend for yourself out there, and I don’t think you’d have lasted very long.”

“Is there something you want from me in return?”

“Me? Oh, no, but I’m sure Constance has already approached you about what favors you can do for her. Consider her your creditor. I’m sure you can come to terms about how to repay your debt.”

Edelgard’s high spirits flagged, though she made certain not to show it. Constance’s goals were problematic. Restoring a noble house went against everything Edelgard believed in and all of her plans for the future of Fódlan, and the prospect of making allies only to crush them when their goals no longer aligned with hers was not something she could take so lightly anymore. She now vastly preferred the thought of having allies she could trust to the end—perhaps the way her alliance with those who slither in the dark had turned sour had spoiled her appetite for such cutthroat maneuvers.

“Although,” Yuri added, a gleam in his pale eyes, “I can think of one thing you can do for me. You’re expecting to find some antidote or cure for our… condition on the surface, right?”

Edelgard nodded.

“Well, I can only ask that you keep us in mind and let me distribute it among my people, provided there is enough to go around. As you can well imagine, none of us particularly enjoy being mice.”

“I think that’s a fair trade. Speaking of the surface… there’s a path to the surface close by, right?”

“You’re as astute as I’d expected, Lady Edelgard!” Yuri gave her a facetious mock bow. “Of course the surface isn’t far. We’ve got to scavenge all our stuff from _somewhere._ Why don’t we take a little trip there?”

Edelgard rested her paw against the head of her axe. She had to keep her guard up. This was too good to be true. “I hope you won’t mind if I insist on remaining armed.”

Yuri patted the hilt of the sword buckled at his hip. “By all means. Great minds think alike, don’t they?”

The three of them set off. The little town took a while to cross, but soon the rodent-filled signs of civilization (meager as they were) gave way to the vast corridors snaking through Abyss.

“Goddess knows why they built all these tunnels,” Yuri mused, shaking his head.

“I can see the tactical value. Should this place ever come under siege or be occupied by an invading army, these tunnels could be of inestimable value. The Knights of Seiros could use them to sneak in and out of Garreg Mach past enemy lines, while any would-be invaders seeking to infiltrate the monastery through Abyss become lost in the maze.”

Yuri laughed. “Garreg Mach? Under siege? Invaded? With the _Church_ in charge? By _whom?_ You certainly have an active imagination, Your Highness.”

“I like to ponder impossible things,” Edelgard replied slyly. In fact, she was already beginning to think about how she could use these tunnels to her advantage in a future war against the Church of Seiros. Now that the Agarthans had thrown her to the wolves, she would have to rethink all of her plans from the ground up.

Yuri held up his paw, readied his sword, and stepped forward, staring intently into the darkness of the tunnel up ahead. “Wait. There’s something up ahead. Brace yourselves. Prepare to run; it could be dangerous.”

Edelgard readied her axe. She felt Bernadetta’s grip on her paw tighten. _“If there’s trouble, you’ll need both hands to shoot,”_ she reminded her, gently shooing her away.

Bernadetta nodded and nocked a scavenged arrow to her bow. She didn’t have much of an arsenal left after losing her quiver yesterday, but she’d tried to replace as much as she could.

“Yuri?” Edelgard called out, holding up her axe and shifting into a combat-ready stance, fully prepared to either attack or defend. “What is it?”

Yuri took a few more steps forward. “It’s…” He sniffed the air. His whiskers twitched; his ears pitched forward. “There’s something dangerous here. Yes, there’s something very dangerous… _right in front of you!”_

The next thing Edelgard knew, a sharp pop and an earsplitting clang ran through the air like a thunderclap; Bernadetta let out a shocked yelp, the floor shook; in the blink of an eye, a wall of steel bars had formed between her and Yuri.

No, not _a_ wall. Four walls. Four walls made of steel bars, thin as wire and arranged in a mesh pattern, forming squares small enough that all Edelgard could fit through them was her wrist; joined at the bottom by a thick steel lip and joined at the top by a solid steel ceiling.

Not a wall. A _cage._

“Yuri!” Edelgard struck the cage with her axe. The wire mesh rattled, but held firm. “Yuri, what is the meaning of this?” She knew she shouldn’t have trusted him—if only she’d buried her axe in his back seconds earlier…

Yuri rolled his shoulders, took a deep breath, and let out a long, loud, weary sigh. “Well? She’s all yours, wrapped up with a pretty little bow, just like I promised,” he called out to the darkness.

And in response, out from the darkness stepped three black-cloaked Agarthan mages with peaked black hoods and beaked black facemasks and a thin, gangly black-and-white mouse with a shock of fiery hair and a wicked, predatory smile, eyes like daggers.

“Well, well, well, Edel,” Kronya drawled, shorn not only of her disguise as Monica von Ochs but also of her humanoid form (Edelgard couldn’t think of a more deserving fate for her than to be reduced to vermin). “It’s been a while, hasn’t it? This is… what, your second day of being stuck as a filthy little rat? Oh, I _love_ seeing my handiwork… you’re so _cute!”_

 _“Kronya!”_ Edelgard struck the walls of the cage again. Deep down, she’d _known,_ even if she hadn’t consciously remembered, who’d broken into Bernadetta’s room the other night and stolen her away. “You craven traitor!”

“Traitor? _Me?”_ Kronya made a surprised face. “Who’s betraying whom? _You’re_ the one who hasn’t been able to contain her raw contempt for us.”

“Whatever they’re offering you to take _their_ side in the schism, I’ll give you twice—”

“Schism? Ha!” She threw her head back and laughed. “Your dear Hubert told you all about that? Vejovis and I made that story up to mess with him! We’ve _all_ finally decided that the power of the Crest of Flames isn’t worth putting up with your bratty behavior, so our whole organization’s decided to throw you in the sewers where you belong, Edelgard, with the rest of the rats!”

“I’m not a rat—” Edelgard seethed.

“You and Hubert think you’re _so_ smart, but your underdeveloped little animal brains can’t hope to compare to even the _dumbest_ Agarthan! You humans are all so _easy_ to fool and manipulate, every last one of you—oh, wait, sorry, I misspoke. You _rats_ are so easy—”

_“I’m not a rat!”_

“You sure do _look_ like one. It’s a fitting look for you, really!”

Edelgard clutched her axe so tightly that she nearly felt wood splinter in her grasp. “Prepare yourself for death while you still can, Kronya!”

“Oh?” Kronya broke ranks with her mages and stepped closer to the cage until her whiskers were just barely touching the wire mesh. “Okay, I’m preparing.”

Edelgard struck the cage with all her might. The cage rattled, the echoing sounds of metal clanging against metal ringing in her ears. Kronya flinched.

“Oh, sorry, you didn’t get my good side,” Kronya said with a cruel giggle, turning her cheek. “Can you try again, please?”

Further enraged, her blood boiling, Edelgard struck again and again and again; all Kronya did was laugh.

“This cage is made out of Agarthan titanium.” Kronya flicked a claw against the wire mesh once Edelgard had stopped swinging her axe. _“Ti-ta-ni-um._ Have you ever heard of titanium, you stupid little beast? Stronger than steel, and lighter, too!”

Edelgard took a step back, her chest heaving and shoulders sagging from exertion, the head of her axe trailing on the floor as her weapon hung from her limp arm. Agarthans had technology the likes of which no one in Fódlan had ever seen, let alone imagined—though those who slither in the dark commanded such scarce resources sparingly and conservatively. Metal so light yet so strong was beyond anything she knew.

“Yuri!” she growled.

Yuri looked back at her and shrugged. “Dreadfully sorry, Edelgard. Kronya and her friends arrived just before you did. Unfortunately for you, they made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.”

“Then so will I.” Edelgard glanced over her shoulder at Bernadetta, who was cowering in the corner. “Bernie!”

Bernadetta snapped to attention. She didn’t look any less terrified. “Y-Yes, Edelgard?”

“Take aim at Yuri.”

Bernadetta fumbled with her bow, drew back the bowstring, and lined up the arrowhead with Yuri’s chest. Her shoulders quivered. Her aim was unsteady. But an arrow could easily fly through the gaps in the titanium wire mesh.

“Yuri,” Edelgard said, “free us, or Bernadetta kills you.” First the Agarthans had thrown her to the wolves. Now the Ashen Wolves had thrown her to the Agarthans. Neither would escape her wrath.

“Really?” Yuri put a paw to his chest. “Bernie… Spooky Bernie… Do they still call you that, by the way?”

“A-Actually my classmates call me Bernie-Bear now,” Bernadetta stammered, struggling to quell the nervous shaking in her paws. “Because I, uh… I n-never leave my den…”

Yuri laughed. “Aw. That’s sweet. Do you _really_ think you could shoot me, though? I mean… I was your first friend, wasn’t I? I don’t bear you any ill will for what your father did to me…”

“Bernadetta, if he doesn’t turn on Kronya and free us in the next five seconds, fire on my command,” Edelgard snapped.

Kronya looked to the mages under her command. “You three. If a single arrow leaves that cage, turn it into an oven.”

The mages all raised their paws, preparing to cast their spells. Silence filled the corridor. For five agonizing seconds, all Edelgard could hear was the rapid fluttering of her own heart. She felt the anger cresting over her heart like waves of a tumultuous ocean. If she could burn down every last one of these monsters and leave nothing behind but cindered shadows…

But she and Bernadetta were little more than rats in a trap. There was nowhere to run if all three of those mages targeted them at once.

Her heart sank. “Put down your bow, Bern,” she said, relenting.

Bernadetta seemed almost relieved to let her bow and arrow both fall to the floor.

Kronya smirked. “I’m glad we could work this out like civilized people. Mages, keep watch over our prisoners. Yuri, our business here is done; you’re welcome to go back to your little village.”

Yuri’s brow furrowed. “But—”

“Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to tell Myson and the Plague Rat about our catch,” Kronya said, brushing off whatever concern Yuri had been about to raise. “I’m sure they’ll be _very_ happy to see our little rat princess again.”

“The Plague Rat? You’re bringing that thing _here?”_ Yuri snarled, his paw falling to his sword. “That was never part of the deal! And neither was—”

“It wasn’t?” Kronya cocked her head. “Funny enough, I remember it clear as day. You wouldn’t happen to have a written copy of our deal, would you? Signed? Stamped? Notarized?”

Yuri scowled. “So that’s how it is,” he spat, laughing bitterly.

“I’m glad at least _you_ can see reason. You’re smart—for a filthy rodent,” she said. She pointed to one of the mages. “See to it Mister Savage Mockingbird returns safely to his fellow sewer rats, okay?”

 _“Kronya!”_ Edelgard called out. “You will not get away with this. None of you. For what you’ve done in Enbarr, in Duscur, here, and everywhere else—when I become Emperor, I’ll erase you from this world!”

Kronya grinned. “Hah! What makes you think an animal like you has _anything_ left to inherit?”

“My father—”

“Is already dead. What? You didn’t think we’d leave him _alive_ after you’d ceased to be useful, did you?”

The words hit Edelgard like a punch to the gut. She felt her legs falter. She tried to speak, but nothing came out. Her father wasn’t… couldn’t be… “Y-You’re l-lying,” she stammered.

Her father, who loved her. Her father, powerless, an emperor clapped in invisible manacles. Her father, clenching his fists until they bled as his children suffered. He couldn’t be gone. They couldn’t have killed him. Not like this…

It had to be a trick. What reason did she have to believe anything that came from these demons’ mouths?

“You’re lying! My father—” Her voice cracked. _“You lie!”_

“Perhaps,” Kronya said. “But seeing as you’re going to die down here, _you’ll never knoooow!”_

With that, she vanished in a flash of light.

As commanded, one of the three masked mages broke away from the group to escort Yuri away.

So this was how it ended, Edelgard thought. Trapped like a rat in a cage with no recourse but to wait for inevitable death. And this time, it would come for her. It would not pass her by this time—she would join the rest of her family. She bowed her head and let her axe fall to the floor, her heart heavy. Bernadetta took her paw, but there was no solace to be gained from her warm grasp.

There was a flash of steel and the mage escorting Yuri crumpled to the floor, blood spurting from their neck. At the same time, there was a flash of fire and one of the two remaining mages fell back, his cloak wreathed in flames. Yuri threw his sword, piercing the burning mage through the heart and killing them.

The one remaining mage hurried to the lock on the cage and started fiddling with it. Yuri tapped them on the shoulder and handed them a key. “Here. You’re gonna need this.”

The mage nodded. Another second of fiddling and the lock opened; a wire-mesh door in the cage’s wall swung inward. With a dramatic flourish, they ripped off their beaked mask to reveal a perfectly ordinary mouse’s face underneath. “Kept you waiting, huh?” they asked Edelgard.

“Um…” Bernadetta tugged on the hem of her cloak. “Wh-Who are you?”

The unmasked mage’s face fell. “Oh, right, you’ve never seen me with my mask off. It’s me, Wesper!”

“Oh! I’m sorry! Thank you so much!”

“Oh, no problem. I’m on your side until I get my chocolate, remember?”

“I love that you idiots all wear masks,” Yuri said to Wesper with a devious smirk. “It makes these things _so_ much easier.”

“Excuse me? I went to the Imperial Sorcery Academy and graduated _squarely_ in the middle of my class,” Wesper retorted. “Anyway, let’s get out of here before reinforcements show up. Or that Plague Rat guy. Wherever he is.”

Relieved, Edelgard grabbed her axe and Bernadetta and slipped free of the cage.

“By the way, you’re welcome,” Yuri said to her.

She socked him in the jaw.

* * *

At the break of dawn, Byleth led the way into Abyss, lighting the gloomy corridors with the fiery yellow-orange glow of the Sword of the Creator held high. She and the students (and Sothis gliding several inches above the floor beside her) wandered, led only by Tomas’ map, well into the morning without finding anything save for some very tiny barracks and a scattered collection of half-eaten mouse corpses clutching makeshift weapons. Abyss was in some ways as vast as the monastery itself. There was too much ground to cover, she feared, but there was too much danger in splitting up. There would be other teams searching the other five entrances soon, she hoped—sooner or later, _someone_ would find something.

The first thing her search party came across were two separate piles of knights’ armor emblazoned with the Crest of Seiros—and the unmistakable shape of the legendary Hero’s Relic, Thunderbrand.

Thunderbrand, the forked seven-bladed sword with a stone in its crossguard bearing the Crest of Charon; its sole wielder was Catherine, the greatest swordsmaster among the Knights of Seiros.

And nestled in Catherine’s armor was a mangy old orange-and-white cat, its blotchy fur patchy and scraggly, its exposed skin covered in sores and scars both new and old. It purred contentedly, curled up amid the scattered collection of gleaming metal plates.

Byleth could hear Caspar let out a shocked and horrified gasp from his perch atop her shoulder. Thunder Catherine was his idol. “Catherine… sh-she couldn’t have… _They got Catherine!”_

“And the one she was with, it seems,” Sothis mused, rattled. “Who was that, again? Your father’s friend, the one who laughs at his own jokes, even if nobody else does?”

“Alois,” Byleth said. She felt as though someone had scooped out her heart and left a hollow pit in its place. “Catherine and Alois…”

“How could this happen?” Caspar cried out.

“They must’ve gotten them with one of those bugs,” Hilda said. She cradled Lysithea protectively, cupping a hand over her just in case the cat caught her scent and tried to pounce on her. “Do you think the cat _ate_ them?”

“No! It couldn’t have!” Caspar wailed. “You stupid cat! Lemme down there, Professor! I’ll crack its skull with my bare paws!”

Byleth cupped her hand around him and patted him on the head with her finger. As usual, he tried to squirm out of her grip, no matter how gentle she was. “There, there,” she consoled him, letting her thumb run through his fur until he calmed down.

“The cat must have killed those little soldiers back there, as well,” Sothis noted. “These so-called Agarthan fiends deserve such a fate; my skin crawls simply hearing that name. But your knight friends… I am sorry, Byleth.”

“It would have had to swallow them whole in a single bite,” Hubert noted, a morbid, mirthless smile on his face. “There isn’t any blood on the floor, nor are there any… _parts.”_

As if roused by the sound of his voice, the cat woke up, stretched, licked its paw, hissed at him, and scampered away.

“Yeah, you’d better run!” Caspar shouted out after it. It sounded like he was about to cry.

“It’s okay, Caspar,” Linhardt assured him. “You know how cats play with their food? Perhaps Catherine and Alois were only gravely injured, but still managed to escape! Remember, they’re just as smart as humans.”

“Thanks, Lin,” Caspar said, though he didn’t sound grateful at all.

“Anyway, um…” Hilda yawned loudly into her hand. “It’s _sooo_ early and I’m clearly just dead weight to all of you, so how about you hand me the map and Lysithea and I head back to the surface and let you do your thing? Or maybe we all head back together and have them send more knights to handle this instead…”

“Yes, by all means, send more knights,” Sothis said, a sardonic scowl playing on her young face. “The last two they sent exceeded our wildest expectations. Byleth, to help you avoid meeting the same fate, I shall scream to alert you if I see a bug touch your skin.”

“We will find our lords if it kills us,” Dedue said to Hilda.

“Uh, yeah, that’s what I’m _worried_ about,” she retorted.

“If we let you have the map, we’ll get lost down here,” Hubert told her. “I’ll bet Claude would like that.”

“Fine,” Hilda pouted. “But I’m tired and my legs hurt and I’m still jittery from when Tomas tried to turn me into a mouse, I barely got an hour of sleep last night, and on top of that, _my legs hurt!_ Dedue, you’re big and strong. Would you be a dear and carry me for a bit?”

Dedue stiffened. For once, he showed an emotion on his face, and that emotion was discomfort. “No. If I were to be seen handling you in such a manner, there would be consequences for us both.”

“We’re _literally_ underground and there’s nobody around for—ugh, never mind. Hey, Hubert?” Hilda asked, running a finger playfully up Hubert’s arm. _“You’re_ tall and broad-shouldered.”

Hubert looked equally uncomfortable. “Apologies, but I have wet noodles for arms, apparently,” he said, tilting his head at Ferdinand. “Ferdinand, why don’t you make yourself useful and help Miss Goneril rest her feet?”

Never remiss to be useful, Ferdinand gladly swept Hilda into his arms.

Petra knelt down and picked Thunderbrand up off the floor. Catherine’s discarded armor rustled around it like dead leaves as she moved it from its resting place. Unlike the Sword of the Creator, it didn’t glow in her hands.

“Careful with that, Petra,” Dorothea cautioned. “Remember what happened to Miklan.”

“I will just be holding it for a few seconds,” Petra assured her. She rummaged through the armor for Catherine’s sword belt and wrapped it around her waist, slipping the forked blade of Thunderbrand through its customized holder and letting the mighty sword rest on her hip. “Surely there is not being any harm in keeping it like this.”

“I hope so. If you turn into a giant monster, I won’t be able to bring myself to slay you.”

“If she turns into a giant monster, you won’t have a chance to,” Hubert said to Dorothea. “She’d bring the ceiling down on us.”

“Hark!” Sothis hissed in Byleth’s ear. “Do you hear that?”

Byleth raised her hand. “Quiet, everyone. Do you hear that?”

Everyone fell silent. The quiet of Abyss’ empty halls pressed down on them. And in that vast sea of silence, a faint, almost imperceptible squeak…

“It is coming closer,” Sothis said. “But is it friend or foe?”

Two mice, one a familiar shade of brown and the other a sandier color that was just as familiar, scurried across the floor and came to a stop at Byleth’s feet, then stood up on their hind legs and started waving their forepaws in the air. The blonder one had a scrap of cloth tied around its waist like a little skirt.

Friends, Byleth decided, and she crouched down to get a better look at them.

 _“Professor Byleth!”_ the mouse who was obviously Alois squeaked. _“Well, aren’t you a sight for sore eyes!”_

 _“See? I told you it was a good idea to stay in this area,”_ the mouse who was obviously Catherine told him. _“I knew someone would come along for us.”_

Byleth scooped the knights up in her hand and lifted them up. “Well,” she called out to the others, “I’ve found Alois and Catherine. They’re okay.”

“I hope we didn’t scare you, leaving our armor behind like that,” Catherine said. “We meant to stay there and wait, but then that cat came…”

“It was a pretty _hairy_ situation. If we hadn’t scampered when we did, it would’ve been a _cat_ astrophe!” Alois chimed in, chuckling. Catherine crossed her arms and rolled her eyes. It was clear she’d had to put up with his jokes all the way down here.

 _“I’m so glad you guys are okay!”_ Caspar cried out, his voice choked with emotion. He scurried down Byleth’s arm to meet them. “I never doubted you were alive for a second, Catherine! Oh, uh… and sorry you’re a mouse now.”

“Don’t worry about it. If anyone can get us back to normal, it’s Lady Rhea,” Catherine assured him. “Have faith, Caspar. We’ll just have to hang in there until she comes up with something. Right now, though, we’ve got some students to find.”

The group continued down the hall. With her hands full, Byleth entrusted the map to Dorothea, who carefully guided them deeper into Abyss.

“Hey,” Alois said. “Catherine, Caspar, I’ve got a question for you two. How are we like the peace treaty between Brigid and the Empire?”

Catherine wearily raised her paw to her forehead. “Goddess, grant me strength…”

“I dunno,” Caspar answered. “How?”

Alois burst out laughing and barely managed to choke out, _“We’ve been_ rat _ified!”_

At that moment, Byleth felt the stone tile under her foot give way and sink about half an inch deeper into the floor. There was a click and a sound like whirring clockwork, and with the squeal of metal on metal and the grinding scrape of metal on stone, two walls of steel bars ascended from the floor on either side of the search party, stretching from one side of the corridor to the other and from floor to ceiling.

“Well, Alois, you’ve finally done it,” Catherine said. “I knew it was only a matter of time before you told a joke so corny that the Goddess herself would punish us for it.”

* * *

 _“Alright, we finally found something,”_ Linhardt called out, popping his furry little head out over the edge of a hole in the wall. After he and the rest of the mice had slipped through the bars of their cage to search for some mechanism that could lower the gates and returned nearly an hour later empty-pawed, this little crawlspace in the wall of the corridor had been the only other place to check.

“What is it?” Byleth asked, feeling a note of hope stir her still and silent heart.

 _“There’s some sort of pressure plate back here,”_ he told her. _“I think if we depress it, it’ll open the cage, but my weight, Catherine’s, and Alois’ combined isn’t enough…”_

“Huh? What’s that?” Hilda asked, leaning on her tiptoes and cupping a hand around her ear to hear him better. “You need something depressed? If only Marianne were here with us; she can depress anything…”

Caspar’s claws pricked against Byleth’s shoulder through her jacket. “In other words, you need more mice up there! Let me up, Professor! I got this!” Before she could object, he scurried down her arm and waited expectantly on the edge of the cuff of her sleeve, so she lifted him up and let him follow Linhardt back into the crawlspace.

The two mice vanished into the hole. Byleth waited.

After another long pause, Caspar peeked out over the edge. “I think we almost got it! We just need a little more weight!”

Lysithea, then, was up next, but after a few more fruitless minutes (though the bars of the cage faintly shook once or twice, momentarily lifting everyone’s hopes only to immediately dash them), she returned with a forlorn shake of her head.

Alois popped up beside her with the rest of the mice. “One more mouse, though! We swear, that’s all it would take!”

“We’re all out of mice,” Hilda said, frustratedly raking her fingers through her bright pink hair.

“Wait,” Petra said. “I am not thinking we need more mice. If we are lifting someone up so they can fit their entire arm in, perhaps they could reach the pressure plate and depress it.”

“It’d have to be someone with long arms,” Linhardt said. “But I suppose it’s worth a shot.”

“Stand back. I will do it,” Dedue said. “I am the tallest. It stands to reason that my arms are the longest.” He stared up at the hole in the wall, its lower edge barely level with his eyes. “But I need a few more inches,” he mused, “to fit my arm in up to the shoulder.”

Ferdinand knelt down and cupped his hands together on the floor. “Plant your boot here, Dedue. I can lift you up.”

Petra knelt down and did the same, and Dedue stepped gingerly onto their hands and allowed them to lift him higher. She and Ferdinand strained under his weight, their faces reddening and cords standing out on their necks from the exertion. Dedue planted himself flush against the wall, his shoulder braced against the edge of the hole, and squeezed his eyes shut. “I almost… _almost…”_ He furrowed his brow and let a groan hiss through his gritted teeth.

“Almost there!” Caspar squeaked at him. “Just a little more! Just one more inch and you’ve got it!”

 _“Higher,”_ Dedue grunted, and Ferdinand and Petra strained themselves to lift him just a few more inches off the ground, his boots teetering atop their trembling grips. Byleth dropped to the floor and planted her hands under her students’ to support them. She immediately felt the full weight of Dedue’s body—every single ounce of it pure muscle, she reckoned—tugging her arms out of their sockets.

There was more than the tension in her arms. There was a tension hanging in the air. A tension of high expectations, thick as fog, hot as a sauna. Right now, everybody’s hopes were riding on Dedue.

Since she didn’t have anything else to do, Hilda started leading a chant.

After what felt like an eternity, Dedue pulled out his arm and stepped off his classmates’ hands. He shook his head sadly as the chanting petered out. “It is no use. If I had but an inch more reach…”

Ferdinand let out a heavy sigh. “I suppose we need one more mouse, then. But what can we do about that?”

A dead silence filled the air. No one answered him.

No one except Hubert.

“All of you, stand back, turn around, and cover your eyes and ears,” he said grimly, drawing a small glass vial with only a shallow puddle of liquid in it from his pocket—Byleth recognized it well as the bottle of _polymorphus muridae_ that had started this whole mess. “I shall use the last of this vial to break us free and find Lady Edelgard. It shall be grueling and humiliating, but I owe it to her as her loyal vassal and retainer—”

Chaos erupted in the cage.

 _“What?_ Hubie, are you _serious?”_ Dorothea cried out.

“Serious as a heart attack,” Hubert said, glowering as he uncapped the vial. “This is my solemn duty to my liege—”

“At least wait until you are no longer hungover anymore to make that kind of decision,” Ferdinand said, snatching the vial from his hand. _“My_ wits, on the other hand, have _not_ been addled by spirits. _I_ will take this poison and use it to rescue us and Lady Edelgard. I will be twice the mouse she is—”

“Oh, give it a rest, you blathering fool!” Hubert took the vial back. “If _that_ is what this means to you, then I won’t let you get within a _foot_ of her!”

“This is not just about Lady Edelgard.” Ferdinand grabbed the vial and tried to wrest it out of his hand again. “Do you think you are the only person with friends who are suffering because of these Agarthan fiends?!”

Dedue stepped forward, his hand hovering over Hubert’s shoulder. “Correct. Prince Dimitri, as well, is—”

“This is a matter of dignity, honor, and _noblesse oblige._ This is about the noble duty to right wrongs and set high examples of morality for all to live by. And this is for atoning for what I did to Bernadetta,” Ferdinand said. “I will rescue her and Edelgard both, and all of us, or my name is not…”

“Yes, _yes,_ Ferdinand von Aegir, we _know!”_ Hubert snapped.

“Listen to them fight,” Sothis sighed as the boys fought, fading into the air beside Byleth. “I fear they will sooner come to blows than realize that there is still enough of that accursed poison for all of them. If they both wish to be mice, then what is the harm?”

Petra stepped forward. “I am offering to do it. I believe every one of us here is willing to be making such sacrifices.”

“Speak for yourself,” Hilda said.

“Well said, Petra,” Dorothea said. “Ferdie, for once put your bloated ego aside. I’ll do it if you two can’t stop fighting.”

Byleth stepped forward and cleared her throat. She knew what she had to do. “Boys.” She held out her hand. “Give me the vial.”

Both Ferdinand and Hubert shut up. Ferdinand sheepishly offered her the vial. “Decide for us, please, Professor,” he said to her as though it was his idea. “But be mindful that only _one_ of us fainted last night.” Hubert scowled at him.

“Hmm…” Sothis stroked one of her braids thoughtfully as she floated alongside Byleth. “The pompous noble is correct. The grim one is still in poor shape, and I doubt he has eaten anything over the past three days. Perhaps you shall give the vial to the tall one?” she suggested, eyeing Dedue. “He seems to have a very level head. Or perhaps the lazy girl could use something to do?”

Byleth’s eyes flitted toward Hilda. Hilda immediately became very interested in prying dirt out of her immaculate and perfectly-manicured fingernails. “Hilda’s good out here,” she said.

“There is also the songstress,” Sothis said, looking at Dorothea, “and the huntress seems eager as well…”

Byleth studied each student in turn. Hubert, both hungover and (still) sleep-deprived, was paler than usual, his black hair a ruffled raven’s-nest, the gray circles under his bloodshot eyes deepening to give his face a skull-like pallor. Ferdinand was run ragged, a tense fury resting in his shoulders and an anguished blend of self-righteousness and self-loathing in equal measures glimmering in his once-bright eyes. Dedue’s stony face betrayed no emotion, but his eyes were careworn and haunted by his failure. Hilda was still faintly shivering from her run-in with Tomas and seemed full of nervous energy. Dorothea and Petra were all but leaning on each other to keep themselves upright, barely able to keep their eyes open; Petra’s blouse was drenched in sweat and clung to her skin. They all said they were willing (except Hilda), but so did every student who risked their life in battle under the church’s watchful eye.

Her fist curled around the vial. Too many students in this academy had tasted this poison already. She couldn’t choose one of her own students, let alone anyone else’s, even if they consented. And so, knowing full well how disappointed her father would be, she lifted the vial and raised her head, opening her mouth.

“Er, Byleth, what in—What are you d—No!” Sothis’ luminous green eyes widened. “No, no! Have you no sense at all?! You have no idea what that will do to _us—_ what it will do to _me!”_

While she was being berated by her phantom companion, Byleth downed the vial’s contents in its entirety in a single gulp, letting the completely odorless and tasteless liquid trickle down her throat. It seemed no different from ordinary water, but as soon as it hit her gut, she felt her skin crawl.

“Spit it out!” Sothis exhorted her, shaking her fists at her. “Spit it out this instant, Byleth! _Please!”_

 _“Professor!”_ her students all cried out in unison.

“Me dammit!” Sothis swore, clutching at her stomach and doubling over. “What have you done, you fool…?” She squeezed her eyes shut and gritted her teeth as though in immense pain, her pale face turning a sickly ashen.

“Everybody, turn your backs on the Professor,” Hubert said to the others. “A dosage such as that takes effect immediately… and it is not pleasant to watch. Professor, the effects vary from person to person. Some simply black out; some experience the transformation as a vivid nightmare; some have amnesia for up to half an hour…”

Hubert’s voice faded away as though someone had just stuffed Byleth’s ears full of cotton. She felt the room spin around her; she blacked out before she even hit the floor.

* * *

The next thing she knew, she was surrounded by darkness, her bones aching and muscles sore, her fur bristling, and an odd tingling running from the tip of her snout down to the tip of her tail. In front of her was a familiar stone dais lit by an unearthly light, and sitting lazily on that dais was a little mouse with silky white fur and a mane of presumably-green hair as long as she was tall spilling down her back. The little mouse scowled.

“Do you see what you have done, Byleth?” Sothis pouted, resting a paw on her cheek as her wiry, gossamer-strand whiskers twitched and her long pink tail swished irritably back and forth. “What do you have to say for yourself?”

“It might be an improvement,” Byleth offered, resting her paws on her hips. “I think you’re much cuter this way.”

Sothis made a squeaky little noise of displeasure in her throat and crossed her arms over her chest, huddling angrily atop her throne as though to hide from her own embarrassment.

“Just wake up and do what you must,” she sighed. “I will remain here and think of what you may do to make this up to me when it is all over.”

With that thinly-veiled threat hanging in the air of the dark netherworld inside her head, Byleth awoke and pulled herself back to the world of the living. As always when leaving this vast abyss, returning felt like trying to swim through fog.

_“…don’t understand… warm but… no heartbeat…”_

_“…is not being possible. Anything that is having life must…”_

_“…can’t be…”_

_“…have you done, Hubert? You’ve killed…”_

_“…shut up! Look! I just saw her move!”_

_“Do not crowd around her,”_ Dedue’s voice rang out as though echoing across a canyon.

 _“For the Goddess’ sake,”_ Ferdinand added, _“everyone, show some restraint!”_

Byleth felt the stale air of the underground passageway tickle her whiskers, the dim torchlight press against her eyelids, and the commingled scent of sweat, worry, and desperation sting her nose. Whatever she was lying on was soft and warm, much more so than the cold stone floor she’d fallen onto.

 _“Professor? Are you alright?”_ Dorothea called out, her soft and lyrical voice ringing in Byleth’s ears like a trumpet.

Byleth opened her eyes to find Dorothea looming like a grand colossus above her and realized that the warm, soft thing cradled around her were Dorothea’s cupped hands. The other students were all barely managing to maintain their distance behind her, every one of them gazing with astonishment and apprehension over her shoulder.

Ferdinand tried to edge his way past Dorothea. “Professor, please, say something. It must have been fifteen minutes ago that you stopped screaming.”

“It was that bad, huh?” Byleth pulled herself up on her hind legs—easier to stand up than she’d thought—and stretched, trying to get a feel for all these unfamiliar bones and muscles under her skin as they ached and throbbed. It was strange… as unnerving as ought to be with such radically different proportions of her limbs, her torso, her tail, it didn’t feel _difficult_ to adjust to it at all. As though some part of her, buried deep in her instincts, knew _exactly_ how to adapt to a body that wasn’t human…

“It was awful,” Dorothea said. “For a moment, I thought that might’ve killed you,” she added with a nervous laugh. “You… r-really weren’t joking when you told me you didn’t have a heartbeat, were you?”

Byleth nodded and crept gingerly across Dorothea’s hands, mindful of the claws capping her fingers and toes that caught on her skin, and peered down over the edge of her little platform. Five feet below her, the ragged lump of her clothes sat in a heap on the floor; those five feet seemed more like fifty from this vantage point, and Byleth felt herself seized by a dizzying, nauseating swirl of vertigo. Strangely, something seemed to be missing, though her head still throbbed and sifting through her memories felt like dredging her hand through mud…

“What has happened to the Sword of the Creator?” Ferdinand asked, crouching down over Byleth’s clothes and then immediately recoiling as though he’d only just remembered how improper it would be to rifle through a woman’s clothes. “It cannot have just vanished.”

Byleth’s paw fell to her hip. She realized that she’d missed the weight of that ancient sword at her side. It must have fallen to the floor with the rest of her clothes, but as Ferdinand had said, it couldn’t have just _vanished!_

Hubert shrugged. “Who knows what these relics can do? Perhaps they _can_ just vanish.”

“If you are not minding, Professor…” Petra knelt down and sifted through Byleth’s clothes. “I think I am seeing… Aha! Here!” Her eyes lit up as she pulled a toothpick-sized object out from under the jacket and handed it to Byleth.

Byleth took it from her. To her amazement, it was a miniature replica of the Sword of the Creator, every detail from its ornate stone-carved hilt to its segmented, spinelike blade to the conspicuous hole running through its crossguard true to life and perfectly proportioned to her tiny, mousy body.

No, not a _replica._ As her paw curled around it, she felt a jolt of lightning run up her arm and a gentle hum rattle her bones as the sword glowed bright yellow-white as though lit from within by an unquenchable fire. Somehow, unlike Thunderbrand, this sword had transformed along with her.

Byleth had no time to ponder any of the church’s other mysteries, let alone this one. Like all the others, it was a mystery for another time, she told herself. Right now, she had work to do.

“Alright, Professor,” Dorothea intoned gravely, lifting her up higher and carrying her to the crawlspace. “It’s all up to you now.”

Byleth pulled herself up onto the bottom lip of the hole; Caspar grabbed her paw and pulled her the rest of the way onto solid ground. “I can’t believe you did that, Professor!”

“I was worried about you for a bit there, Professor!” Alois all but shouted as he swept her up and clapped her heartily on the back. “I don’t know what I’d say to your father if you’d… Well, for starters, I suppose I’d have to _shout_ it at him…”

“We all were worried,” Linhardt told her. “Even nonlethal poisons can kill if the target has certain medical conditions. Not saying you’re anything but healthy, but…”

The first thing Byleth noticed about them was that none of their voices sounded like soft, high-pitched squeaks anymore. In fact, every last one of them sounded exactly like they had as humans. It must have been the new ears, she figured.

She joined the rest of the mice. The tunnel through the wall continued for quite a ways—there was a dull, faint light in the distance—but about a few feet down (just a little farther than Dedue’s arms were long, apparently) was a cold metal plate set into the floor that sank just a fraction of an inch under their combined weight.

“It’ll work this time,” Catherine said. “I can feel it. Now all of us, jump on three—One… two… _three!”_

They jumped. The plate gave way, sinking about a half an inch down; a rusty scraping sound and the sound of winding clockwork filled the air.

 _“It’s working!”_ Dorothea cried out amid a ragged cheer from the rest of her classmates, their voices echoing down the length of the tunnel.

“We did it!” Caspar cheered.

Catherine sighed. “Thank the Goddess we were right about only needing one more mouse.”

“Thank the Goddess we were right about this being a switch for the bars,” Lysithea said, tugging on the little pink bow Hilda had tied around her neck. “What if it had caused the ceiling to collapse? Or the floor to open up and dump everyone into a pit of spikes?”

“Lysithea, you’ve got to learn to respect adult intuition,” Alois said. “Isn’t that right, Professor?”

Byleth saw the way Lysithea’s white fur bristled and her tail irritably twitched and decided not to exacerbate the situation. If there was one thing that girl hated, it was being treated like a child, either by adults or by her peers. She was a bit like Sothis in that respect, although unlike Sothis she didn’t spend most of her time napping. “Lysithea has a point. We were lucky.”

“Anyway,” Catherine continued, “sorry you had to drag yourself into this, Byleth. Now let’s get going—”

A brick fell from the ceiling of the crawlspace and slammed onto the floor with a thunderous crack, sealing the tunnel completely and plunging the mice into darkness save only for the fiery glow of Byleth’s sword and the faint light at the other end of the tunnel.

 _“Fuck!”_ Caspar cried out.

“Huh. Didn’t even have to tell a joke this time,” Alois muttered.

* * *

Archbishop Rhea was gripping the armrests of her dais so tightly that her knuckles turned white. “Are you _certain?”_ she asked.

Seteth nodded. “I am certain, Lady Rhea. They said this was an Agarthan plot.”

Rhea’s expression didn’t change. She didn’t move, save for her fingers more tightly digging into her seat. Her serene composure was gone; the light in her eyes was hard and cold, her mouth drawn in a thin-lipped, tight line; she gazed off into the distance, eyes focused on nothing in particular. The morning light filtering through the windows of the audience chamber lent no warmth to her face.

“Then the passing of Professor Minerva was their doing,” she said. Though it was conjecture, she said it as though it were fact. That was simply how the Agarthans operated. To think that they still existed to this day… Seteth feared to contemplate such things.

“I am… sorry. The news from Fhirdiad did not reach us until just the other day. I thought you already knew.” It was unnerving seeing Rhea in such a state. Seeing Seiros’ cruel emerald eyes set in her face and not the carefully-practiced mask of the Archbishop…

They were all masks, every different face she’d worn, every successive Archbishop she’d been, but she’d had a thousand years of practice wearing them perfectly. To see the mask slip was to know that something was gravely wrong not only intellectually, but on a gut-wrenching physical level as well. This was worse than Flayn’s kidnapping by orders of magnitude.

“Surely there must be some way to restore the affected students,” Seteth said, hoping to pull Rhea’s thoughts onto a new, more optimistic track.

“As I have assured you numerous times these past ten years, I disposed of my stock of _polymorphus muridae,”_ she said to him. “I mixed it with the _antemorphus muridae_ to neutralize it and poured it all into the pond.”

“All of it?”

“All of it.” Rhea raised a pale, slender hand wearily to her forehead, brushing aside a long lock of mint-green hair. “Perhaps there is another way… perhaps if I create empty vessels for the affected students, harvest the souls from their current bodies, and implant their souls into the new vessels… no, no, but that would take _weeks…”_

“I am certain you will think of something, Lady Rhea,” Seteth said, hoping with all his heart she would come up with a better idea than ‘euthanize the mice and bind their souls to bespoke vessels.’ “I have the utmost faith in you.”

“Thank you, Cichol.”

Seteth stiffened at the sound of his true name and stole a nervous glance over his shoulder to confirm that the audience chamber was empty. To hear Rhea make such a lapse was to know just how unnerved she was by his news.

She cleared her throat and softly coughed into her hand. “Pardon me. I had something caught in my throat. Thank you, Seteth. Now… about the Agarthans…”

“Perhaps we should concern ourselves with the students first,” he said, worried. The grim, single-minded determination of Seiros was a disturbing thing to behold when Rhea allowed it free rein.

“Yes, yes. Of course. All of the monastery cats have been penned away, correct?”

“Yes, for the affected students’ protection. They have been penned away in… I am not quite sure where, myself. The stables, I think. I had Professor Manuela and Professor Hanneman take charge of that initiative.”

“Take the cats and have them brought into every entrance to Abyss.”

“After we have recovered the students, of course,” Seteth assumed.

“Yes. Yes, yes. Of course. After we have recovered the students,” Rhea reassured him, her voice completely and utterly devoid of any emotion that would set his mind at ease. “After we have recovered the students, I want every mouse and rat in Abyss to die.”

Seteth bowed. “I understand, Lady Rhea.”

* * *

Myson stood over two bodies: A dead rat, and an almost-dead rat.

 _“Is it… time…?”_ The Plague Rat rasped, struggling to breathe, his chest heaving. No magic or science could sustain his body anymore—and not because of the damage it had sustained when fighting that Blaiddyd boy. The rat’s mighty spirit had burned through yet another body.

“Yes. The next vessel is ready,” Myson said, gazing down at the stitched-together corpse to the Plague Rat’s size and mentally apprising the magic sigil traced around its body. Though the Plague Rat had ripped it nearly in half in a fit of pique the other day, the severe damage to its body had been repaired through science and magic and the soul transference process was ready to begin.

 _“Good… good…”_ The ailing, wounded rat coughed, blood spilling from his mouth and from his empty eye sockets.

“We only have the resources for one more vessel after this one,” Solon reminded the two of them, looming overhead like a titan with a scowl on his face that made the wormy veins tracing his corpse-blue skin pop. “Our need for decisive, swift victory has never been greater. Our salvation rests on this, Myson. If you should fail our so-called Plague Rat…”

Myson grimly nodded, knowing well the cost of failure.

 _“Yes… but we have everything we need now. And besides…”_ The Plague Rat mustered a gurgling laugh that decayed to a breathless wheeze and finally a weak death rattle, punctuating a night spent barely clinging to life with a pitiful ellipses.

Myson watched the Plague Rat die, watched his blood run through the channels engraved in the floor, watched conduits of blazing light trace themselves around the other corpse lying beside it, and watched the corpse open its shining golden-white eyes, pull itself gingerly to its feet, test new limbs and a new tail, sniff the air with a new nose and feel the wind with new whiskers, listen with new ears…

The shape of a nearly unrecognizable fragment of the Crest of Flames lingered on its chest for a second, traced in glittering light, before fading away. The rat took the skull helmet from the fresh corpse lying at its side and placed it over its own head, and with that, the transformation was complete.

 _“What does not kill you,”_ the Plague Rat said, _“can only make you stronger!”_

This was a setback, Myson knew. This type of fleshcrafting was nearly impossible. Only the Fell Star itself had mastered such things; even Solon was by comparison to that abomination a rank amateur, a child playing in the mud. The next corpse would have to be a perfect corpse—a vessel strong enough to contain the strength of this beast’s spirit when resuscitated. They only had one more chance to create that perfect corpse now.

But, setback as it was, the sight of the Plague Rat’s regeneration brought a smile to his face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yuri: "This wasn't part of the deal!"
> 
> Kronya: "I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it further."


	8. The Donner Party

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bernadetta makes a discovery about Yuri that shocks her to her core. Claude and Dimitri finally zero in on Edelgard. Alois makes two new friends.

Hubert held two very unfortunate Agarthan mages by their tails, dangling one upside-down from each hand.

“You,” he hissed at them, kneeling at the side of their decimated barracks and glaring down at them, “talk.”

“Sure!” one of the mages said. “Anything! What do you want us to talk about? The weather? Hey, Twenty-Four, what’s the weather like?”

Twenty-Four looked up at the ceiling with great difficulty. “Uh… rocks?”

“What else can we talk about? Sports?”

Hubert shook them to silence their incessant squeaking. “We can start with your names.”

“Like hell are we telling you our names!” Twenty-Four said. “He’s Twenty-One and I’m Twenty-Four.”

“Yeah, you’re _Hubert von Vestra._ You can hunt us down and turn into a bat and drink our blood if you know our names,” Twenty-One said.

Hubert was taken aback. He wasn’t aware of such rumors about himself, and he was aware of just about everything. “A… bat. And who told you that?”

“Oh, you know, I heard it from a friend,” Twenty-One said.

“A friend of a friend. Wasn’t he your cousin’s roommate back in Shambhala?”

Hubert shook them again to silence them. “Shambhala. Where is it?”

“Do we _look_ like the kind of people who’d know?” Twenty-One asked.

“You _live_ there.”

“Yeah, but they gas us and put black bags over our heads whenever we leave!” Twenty-Four said.

Hubert shook his head. He’d been excited to learn the wherabouts of the Agarthans’ underground city, but that would have to wait. He couldn’t get distracted.

“What’s a ‘Shambhala?’” Hilda asked him.

“Nothing.” Hubert held the mice a little higher up. “Where is Edelgard?”

“Hey, if we knew, do you think we’d _be_ here right now?” Twenty-One asked.

“Myson’s been zipping all across Abyss to find her. I think she was just spotted in Chrysalis Row this morning?” Twenty-Four chimed in. “And she was in that camp with all the babies the morning before that.”

“Ugh, I _hate_ that place!” Twenty-One whined. “Those little babies give me the creeps!”

“I know! They’re like giant maggots,” Twenty-Four said. “And you have to hold them and they’re all gross and fleshy, like one of those hairless cats. Or like Solon’s bald, veiny forehead.”

“Forehead? That thing’s more like a fivehead!”

“That thing makes a fivehead look small. That’s more like a sixhead or a sevenhead.”

“You know, I dared Thirteen to touch it once? He never came back,” Twenty-One said.

“Shut up!” Hubert hissed, giving them another savage shake. He couldn’t take much more of this assault on his eardrums. “Where is Solon? Where is he conducting his experiments?”

“Hey, how do _you_ know Solon’s conducting experiments?” Twenty-One asked him.

“Because he’s _always_ conducting experiments.”

“Good point,” Twenty-Four said.

“He’s set up shop in the big arena,” Twenty-One said. “Needed the floor space for his giant polymorphic magic seal.”

“Just don’t tell him we told you that,” Twenty-Four said, “or he’ll totally turn us inside out!”

“Or use the Forbidden Spell of Zahras on us and trap us in eternal darkness.”

Hubert smiled. He couldn’t help but make it a sinister one. “Your secret is safe with me.”

“Oh, crap. You’re gonna kill us, aren’t you?” Twenty-Four asked.

“Do either of you know healing magic?” Hubert asked the two mice.

“Tch. No,” Twenty-One scoffed. “We’re dark mages for life! None of that faith crap for us.”

“Good,” Hubert said, and he stood up, lifted his arms straight above his head, and dropped both mice unceremoniously to the floor. Judging from their pained, faint squeaks, he could tell that both were still alive; judging from how they crawled, he could tell that both had quite a few broken bones. “Dorothea, look on the map for a wide open space, like an arena. That’s where Tomas is. If anyone can tell us where Edelgard and the others are, it’s him.”

Dorothea consulted the map. “There’s one, and it’s not far… relatively speaking.”

“What about the Professor?” Dedue asked.

“She can take care of herself,” Hubert said. In truth, he was almost glad to be rid of her. He refused to trust her as much as Edelgard did—though he deferred to her judgment in all other things, his liege was far more trusting of that walking enigma than she ought to be.

“We’ll keep going forward and take a right at the next junction,” Dorothea said.

“Excellent.” Hubert led the team onward. “Careful where you tread.”

* * *

“First things first, you two have to leave _now,_ and you have to leave _quickly,”_ Yuri said to Bernadetta and Edelgard, still rubbing his jaw as he and Wesper led the two of them away from the cage and through the cavernous lair of the Ashen Wolves. Huts and makeshift shelters that had once harbored the weary and browbeaten denizens of Abyss loomed overhead dozens of stories tall and crawled with formerly-human mice. “If Kronya can warp _away_ from here, she can warp _to_ here, and I’m sure she’ll bring the Plague Rat with her.”

“Why is it,” Wesper moaned, “that _everyone_ knew about this Plague Rat guy except for _me?”_

Yuri ripped a ragged brown cloak off a passing mouse and all but threw it at Bernadetta. “Bernie, wear this. Your little coat there is fine, but you need something to cover your head; that mop of hair is a dead giveaway.”

Bernadetta unfurled the cloak, tossed it over her shoulders, and drew the cowl over her head. It actually felt good—almost refreshing, in fact—to be wearing something with a hood now. Hoods were perfect for hiding in, and that was the most important thing in the world to her right now (or, in fact, most of the time).

“As for you, Your Majesty…” Yuri snatched another cloak and tossed it over to Edelgard. _“Come to me later and I’ll reimburse you for it!”_ he called out to its previous owner. “Now, I’m sure you’re probably not used to hiding your identity—”

“Very used to it, actually,” Edelgard said tersely, putting the cloak on over her own.

“Wait, wait, wait,” he said to her. “Hold on a second. What you’re already wearing…”

“Yes?”

“That’s red, isn’t it?” he asked. _“Fucking colorblindness,”_ he muttered under his breath.

Edelgard grasped her cloak defensively. “Perhaps.”

“Yeah, I thought it was red. Colors of Adrestia. Lose it.”

 _“Excuse me?”_ she snapped at him, drawing her ragged red cloak even tighter around her shoulders as though it were a security blanket.

“You’re literally wearing a _red flag,_ Your Highness,” Yuri said to her, exasperated. “Don’t you think they’ll be _looking_ for that?”

“We’re all mice; we’re all colorblind,” Edelgard retorted.

“Okay, so none of us can tell red or green apart. That just means they’ll hunt down anyone who’s wearing red _or_ green. Doesn’t buy you a lot of protection.” He held out his paw. “Lose the red.”

“No!”

“What, are you gonna cry without your blankie or something?”

If looks could kill, Bernadetta was certain that the look Edelgard gave Yuri would eviscerate him.

Bernadetta could feel her mousy little heart pounding inside her mousy little chest. Yuri had been right; Kronya could send more of her men here to hunt them down at any moment and here they were, arguing about clothes. “El—Edelgard, I-I think you should just follow his advice!” she blurted out.

Obviously quelling a great deal of rage, Edelgard adjusted her new, drab brown cloak over the old one until every trace of red (presumably) was hidden. “Will this meet your exacting standards, Yuri?” she snapped.

“Yes, yes, yes, oh my Goddess,” Yuri sighed, rolling his eyes. “Just _go_ already.”

“You’re not coming with us?” Bernadetta asked.

“I have my people to look after down here,” he said. “And we don’t want to lose our man on the inside, do we?” he added, patting Wesper on the back. “Find Constance and Matthias and take them with you. Shady Lady can’t do subterfuge if her life depends on it and your buddy is _way_ too earnest; they’re a liability on a _good_ day.”

“Also, Myson will probably recognize him from the wagon, if the Plague Rat doesn’t,” Wesper chimed in.

“Good point,” Edelgard said. “But won’t he recognize _you,_ too?”

“Oh, Goddess, I hadn’t thought of that,” he replied, blanching.

“Don’t worry, if he can tell him apart from a dozen other masked goons, we’ve got bigger problems. Now you’ll have to injure us both,” Yuri said to Edelgard, “so it looks like we tried to stop you from escaping.”

“Uh, wh-what?!” Wesper gasped, eyes widening. “But I—”

“Don’t worry, you’ll be fine. Anyway, it’s got to be a debilitating injury, something that looks like we couldn’t follow you any further.” Yuri snapped his fingers. “I’ve got it! Bernie, shoot us both in the leg.”

 _“What?”_ Bernadetta gasped.

“He’s right,” Edelgard said. “It’s the only way they can avoid suspicion.”

“Your Highness, please…” Wesper whined. “I don’t want to take an arrow to the knee!”

“Oh, please. I know healing magic,” Yuri said. “Now put your mask back on so you look like you’re on duty.”

Wesper complied and put the beaked mage’s mask on, then drew up his hood. He looked no different from any of Myson’s other faceless mages.

 _“They must have gone this way!”_ a faint voice rang out in the distance. Bernadetta’s heart leaped to her throat. They were coming.

“Anyway, it doesn’t have to be the knee,” Yuri added. “You can shoot us in the thigh. Just be careful not to nick the femoral artery, or we’ll both bleed out in minutes. Can you do that, Bernie-Bear?”

“Yuri! Of course I can’t _shoot_ you!”

“Or just go ahead and beat us half to death if it’s not too much trouble,” he said. “C’mon. You know I can survive _that,_ at least.”

 _“I_ don’t!” Wesper protested.

“Beat you—” Bernadetta grabbed Edelgard by the arm, afraid she might be considering it. “No! We can’t do that!”

Yuri looked genuinely puzzled, cocking his head like a dog whose master had just given it an order it didn’t understand. “Why not? Whatever you decide on, just get it over with and make it look convincing! They’re already on their way here!”

“I can’t do that to you! Not after what my father—”

“Didn’t your father tell you _why_ he had me thrashed within an inch of my life in the first place?” Yuri snapped at her.

Bernadetta suddenly found it very hard to breathe on account of the lump in her throat. She could feel her chest heaving, her lungs burning. What did he mean? What was he talking about? “All Father told me,” she said, pulling together her composure, “was that… that commoners were scum, every last one of them, and if any one of them ever tried to so much as speak to me again, he’d… kill them.”

“That’s it?” Yuri asked, nonplussed. “He didn’t tell you anything else?”

Bernadetta shook her head. _That’s it?_ What did he mean, _that’s it?_ That incident had left her permanently scarred! It was the reason she’d never been able to make another friend…

“And what is _that_ supposed to mean?” Edelgard asked, a hard light in her eyes.

Exasperated, Yuri held out his paw. “Okay, Bernie. Just give me two arrows from your quiver and I’ll just stab us both and make it look like we’ve been shot.”

She shook her head again. “I—I can’t—”

He rolled his eyes. “Oh, for Goddess’ sake, Bernie. By the time we’d met, I’d already been working as a mercenary. Being the assistant to your estate’s gardener was just my cover. I was there on behalf of a client who wanted the heir of Varley dead. Your father found me standing over your bed with a dagger in my hand and taught me a lesson I’d never forget. There you go. Can you shoot me now?”

 _“What?”_ Edelgard hissed, her eyes narrowing and jaw clenching. She gripped Bernadetta by the shoulder, her claws protectively digging into her cloak.

“Y-You were an _assassin?”_ Bernadetta squeaked. Her blood ran cold. And he’d tried to _murder_ her in her sleep? “And… that was why my father…?”

“It’s really heartwarming to know your father was the kind of man who would nearly kill a man with his bare hands to protect your life, isn’t it? He must have really loved you.”

“But… but… b-but he… I…” Bernadetta felt herself take one staggering step backward, then another, her heart pounding in her ribcage. Nothing made sense anymore. If her father had been right all along, and he cared for her, and he loved her, then nothing made sense anymore. Everything made sense, but nothing made sense. Her father loved her. But he’d tortured her. But if he loved her, then how could he have tortured her? Had it really been torture? Or was she just too sensitive?

 _“There they are! This way!”_ the faint voice, now much less faint, rang out again.

“Enough,” Edelgard snapped.

Yuri tapped his foot on the floor irritably. “Edelgard’s right, we don’t have much time. Ready for the shooting now?”

 _“Shut up!”_ Bernadetta felt herself shout, and suddenly she had her bow in her hand and an arrow nocked to the bowstring and its head lined up against Yuri’s heart. Her paws were trembling, but her aim was shockingly steady. “I had _nightmares_ because of what happened to you! I still do! I was terrified of, terrified _for_ everyone who was ever _nice_ to me because of what my father did to you! And now you say it was all a _lie?”_

“Easy, Bernie!” Yuri held up his paws. “In the _leg,_ like we talked about—”

Edelgard cracked him over the side of his head with the blunt side of her axe. His eyes rolled up and he crumpled to the floor like a marionette with all its strings cut. “That’ll do,” she said.

Wesper looked down at Yuri’s unconscious body and protectively clutched his head. “Not the brain, please! I need that for magic stuff! And I have a bad history with concussions and—”

Edelgard drove the blunt side of her axe into his ribcage and he collapsed, wheezing. “I’ve just broken most of your ribs. Hopefully, Myson and Kronya will understand if you can’t run after us.”

 _“Thank… you… Your Highness…”_ he gasped.

“Now come along, Bernie,” she said, taking Bernadetta by the arm and pulling her along.

Bernadetta didn’t budge. She was still rooted to the spot, frozen, staring down at Yuri’s unconscious body.

 _“Bernie,”_ Edelgard snapped, more harshly this time. “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” she muttered, wrapping her arm around Bernadetta’s waist and hoisting her up over her shoulder.

Lost in her thoughts, Bernadetta hardly noticed the tremors each step Edelgard took sent through her body as she hung limply over the princess’ shoulder, or the fireball that just barely singed her back as it sailed over Edelgard’s shoulder.

“Father…” she sniffled, tears welling up in her eyes and blurring the sight of Yuri’s body behind a veil of mist as his unconscious body and Wesper’s—and the raiders crowding around them—vanished into the distance behind the two of them.

Her father had protected her from him. Her fear had been a lie, the fear she’d carried in her heart for the past two years ever since she’d heard that that poor gardener’s boy had been fished half-dead from the river had been a fear she never should have had. She’d never had any real friends before coming to the monastery in the first place. Were Dorothea and Petra and Alois and Byleth and Edelgard and everyone else who was openly nice to her plotting her demise, too? Were they all just like Yuri?

Her father had protected her. _Protected_ her. _Saved_ her. How could it be? How could her father _love_ her? Was it love? Was it _all_ love? Had it all been love all along, and she’d just been too selfish and self-centered to know better? Was being tied to a chair love? Was having all her interests mocked love? Was being taught how to bow and curtsy and eat with the right fork and do your hair and never speak out of turn—or ever—was _that_ love? Was that caring? Had she been wrong all along?

 _“I think we lost them,”_ Matthias called out, and that was when Bernadetta snapped out of her musings and realized she wasn’t lying over Edelgard’s shoulder anymore. She was sitting in the back of a makeshift wagon drawn by a trained rat, squeezed in between a slumbering bat and Matthias as he leaned over the back. How long had she spaced out?

The wagon wasn’t anywhere near as spacious as the one she and Edelgard had commandeered yesterday morning; Constance’s pet bat took up about half of the space in back, leaving little room for any other passengers. Constance sat up front, nudging the rat in the right direction through deft application of magic; Edelgard crouched at her side, axe in hand, her cloak fluttering in the wind as the wagon rushed through the halls of Abyss.

Bernadetta rubbed her eyes. “Where am I?” she mumbled.

“Safe, hopefully,” Matthias said, patting her on the shoulder. “Are you, uh… okay? You were completely catatonic when Edelgard met up with me and Constance! She had to drag you like a sack of acorns!”

“No, no, I’m fine,” she mumbled, curling up and shrinking away from his touch. The bat shivered and wriggled as Bernadetta brushed up against one of its leathery wings.

“Y’know, Zeke had to do that for me once when I was little. Lugged me halfway from Mousebrook to the camp like I was a big ol’ potato, because I was so scared out of my wits by those cannibals! They tried to eat us—didn’t succeed, obviously, although that was how Zeke lost his eye. Anyway, do you think Yuri and Wesper are okay? Yuri, I can take or leave; he seems kinda hard to get along with, since, y’know, he, uh, tried to kill us and everything when we first met him. But Wesper was really nice for a chud…”

Normally, Matthias’ genial ramblings, even when he was talking about things he had no business being genial about, were oddly comforting. But this time, Bernadetta just felt the pit in her stomach grow wider. Was he going to betray her, too?

“Oh, darn, that reminds me!” Matthias exclaimed. “What if the Plague Rat went to the camp looking for you before what’s-her-name tried to trap you? Zeke could be in danger!” He crawled over Bernadetta and the bat to the front of the wagon. _“Hey! Hey, Constance! Where are we going? We’ve got to get to my camp! Yes, yes, of_ course _I’ll proclaim the glory and majesty of House Nuvelle to my dying day…”_

Edelgard and Matthias traded places, and the next thing Bernadetta knew, Edelgard’s pale eyes were boring into hers.

“I’m sorry I caused so much trouble,” Bernadetta mumbled, averting her eyes.

“We escaped. That’s all I’m concerned with.” Edelgard loosened the cloak Yuri had given her and buried her fists in the red cloak underneath. “That execrable Yuri… it seems your first impression of him was entirely accurate, Bernie.”

Bernadetta didn’t know what to say. Yuri had wanted her dead. He’d tried to kill her. Her father had saved her—he’d _cared_ about her. That meant that everything she had told Edelgard—everything about how cruel and heartless her father had been, everything that had made Edelgard feel the slightest sympathy to her—had been a lie.

She’d lied to Edelgard. She’d made up a false story of her past, a fairy tale, and used it to manipulate her. Surely on some level she must have known that she was being dishonest, but she hadn’t been able to help herself, not with Edelgard coaxing that lie out of her.

“I’m sorry,” she mumbled again.

“I can scarcely believe what Yuri said to you back there,” Edelgard said, reaching out to her. “I know you must be struggling to make sense of it all—”

Bernadetta shrank back, curling up tighter and wedging herself into the corner of the wagon between the wall and Constance’s pet bat.

Edelgard’s face fell.

“I’m sorry,” Bernadetta said for a third time. “I… lied to you. I don’t deserve your sympathy, Your Highness.”

“What did you lie to me about?”

“My father. I was wrong about him,” she said, choking as she fought back tears. “He… really _did_ care about me. He just wanted what was best for me; I was s-selfish…”

She felt Edelgard’s paws fall to her shoulders. “Bernie…”

Bernadetta shook her head and ripped herself free, trying to burrow as deep into the corner as possible, wishing she could just tunnel through the rickety scrap-wood walls and dash herself against the floor as it sped by underfoot. “No! P-Please, Lady Edelgard, I don’t deserve your pity, I’m n-not worthy of your grace!” she sobbed. “I-I’m a liar, and selfish, a-and ungrateful, and lazy, and—and unmarriageable, and… and… _”_

Her voice gave out. All she could do was keep sobbing. She couldn’t even fight back as Edelgard leaned closer, wrapping her up in her arms and her cloak. Edelgard was so royal, so regal, even like _this,_ and her fur smelled of lilac from the bath, and she was so much warmer and softer than Bernadetta deserved…

“Let it all go,” Edelgard consoled her. “Let time take these tears from you. I will be here when you’re finished.”

After what felt like an agonizing eternity, she ran out of tears to shed, though there was still a lump in her throat as hard as coal and an empty pit running from her heart to her stomach.

Edelgard began to stroke her fur, and that was enough to get her crying again. _Crying only makes things worse,_ her father had always told her. _A good nobleman’s wife doesn’t cry, Bernie._ But there was nothing else she could do. The wreckage of everything she’d thought she’d known drifted around her like flotsam and jetsam from a ship lost at sea, and she wasn’t worth clinging to the driftwood.

But instead, the driftwood clung to her.

When at long last she was done, Bernadetta sniffled, hiccuped, and brushed the last of her tears from her eyes. Edelgard was still little more than a ghostly white blur before her, but the strength of her arms was warm, solid, and real.

“Only you can truly understand your own pain,” Edelgard told her. “Others can sympathize or even empathize, but all anyone else can offer are the tears of an outsider looking in. However, with that said…” She sighed. “I understand well the pain of having family who expects you to treat their torture as though it were kindness. I had told you that the man who imprisoned me was my uncle… or, at least, for all intents and purposes, he was.”

Bernadetta nodded.

“After the experiments had run their course and I alone stood as the sole survivor, he cared for my health and well-being. But he did not care out of any sense of affection or empathy—only because I was _useful_ to him, and he sought only to preserve that usefulness until his plans had run their course.” Edelgard’s paw slipped across her cheek and slid behind her ear, scratching gently with her thumb while her fingers raked her scalp. “Someone who has not suffered as we have might mistake what your father did to Yuri for you as an act of _love,_ but just like my uncle, all he cared about was ensuring a return on his investment. That is not love, Bernadetta. Your father didn’t love you.”

“I… but… he…” Bernadetta swallowed the lump in her throat. “I-I guess he didn’t. I guess no one does, then…”

Edelgard held her closer to her chest, her voice barely a whisper as her whiskers tickled her ear. “You said you wanted to escape your father’s influence. I never told you it would be easy. He’s sunk his claws deep into your heart and will not so easily relinquish his grasp. But since you asked for my help, I will give it to you gladly—as much of it as you need. When I become emperor, anything I can do to your father—put him under house arrest, exile him, let Hubert do with him as he pleases—”

In spite of herself, Bernadetta laughed.

“Oh?” Edelgard smiled. “You seemed most amenable to that last one. Perhaps I shall instruct Hubert to tie your father to a chair and leave him be for a few weeks?”

“No!” Bernadetta gasped. “He’s—I mean…”

“I see. You wouldn’t wish Hubert on your worst enemy. Though I don’t agree with you, I can understand your reasoning. Very well, then; exile it is. But where? Sreng? Almyra? Brigid? Shall I leave him adrift in a rowboat halfway across the ocean? Or perhaps send him to Ailell, the Valley of Torment?” Edelgard asked, sounding more like Hubert by the second.

“Anywhere’s fine, I guess… as long as I don’t have to go there.”

“I’ll ask Hubert and have him decide, then.”

A horrible thought occurred to Bernadetta; try as she might, she couldn’t stop herself from voicing it. “But do you really think… Do you think you can still _be_ the emperor?”

“I won’t let these monsters stop me.”

“But if they’ve killed your father, and you’re stuck down here—”

Bernadetta felt Edelgard’s claws dig into her skin as her fists reflexively clenched. _“They haven’t—”_ She unclenched her firsts and shook her head. “They wouldn’t have killed him. They need him alive to appoint a new heir, or else the Empire would be wracked by a legitimacy crisis the likes of which it has never seen. And that’s only if—” She took a breath as though to calm her nerves. “I’ve only been missing for a few days. The news has likely only just reached Enbarr in the first place. That isn’t enough for them to declare me dead; that would take months of searching at least, or at least until they find a body. Even if they aim to kill me down here, they’ll still have need of my father until then. And so once we exterminate these rats—then nothing will stand in my way.”

Edelgard let the words spew out, clearly trying to convince herself as well as Bernadetta.

“So in short, yes,” she mumbled, a little sheepishly, a little self-consciously, as though she was embarrassed to have spoken so freely. “I will be the next Emperor of Adrestia.” Her voice strengthened, taking on the clear and unwavering tone that fit her best. “Not for the sake of those who slither in the dark, but mine, and my siblings’, and my father’s, and yours… and for all humanity.”

“That’s a lot of sakes.”

Edelgard nodded. “I’ve been given a lot of power. I suppose I’ve yet to tell you _what_ those experiments I was subjected to were meant to do.”

Bernadetta shook her head. “No, and—I don’t really want to know if you’re not comfortable sharing. I’ll take your word for it.”

Edelgard almost sounded relieved. “Thank you, Bernadetta. Let me just say that I was intended to dominate on their behalf, rule in their stead, act as a mouthpiece for their twisted ideas and a sword to spread their evil ways and nothing more—but I have ideals of my own, ones that preclude their selfish aims. Those ideals are just like all the passions your father told you were stupid and useless: your writing, your sewing, your drawing and painting. I, too, have been raised to believe that my own desires don’t matter. But my desires tell me to make a world where each and every one of us has the equal freedoms and opportunities to pursue their own passions and be their own people, regardless of class or status. A world where all humans have a chance to seize their own futures and cut their own paths. A world where no one has fathers like yours or uncles like mine; where no one suffers as we have suffered.”

As Bernadetta wiped the last vestiges of tears from her eyes and uncovered the misty veil that had been hiding Edelgard’s face, she was struck by the stern, firm resolve she saw. It was an expression, rigid and resolute, that she had seen on Edelgard dozens of times before—the steadfast, stoic gaze and set jaw of a strong, confident leader—but she’d never seen a mouse’s furry snout and little pink nose and wiry whiskers wear that same face so well, so naturally.

“Wow,” she said. “Th-That sounds like a lot of hard work… Are you sure you can do all that?”

Edelgard gazed at her with soft, warm eyes and gently rested a paw on her forehead, giving her a gentle pat. “Just trust me,” she replied. “You’ll walk with me until that day comes, won’t you?”

Bernadetta took a deep breath and nodded.

* * *

Dimitri could hear birds chirping in the sky. He felt a sunbeam lying across his face, warming his cheeks; the light bled through his eyelids and brought a throbbing orange glow to the darkness. And amid the birdsong, the sound of his stepmother’s soft voice weaved through his ears as she gently dragged a comb through his hair. He lay back, resting his head, breathing deeply through his nose to savor the scent of flowers he hadn’t been able to smell for four long years.

 _“You have to take better care of yourself, Dimitri,”_ his stepmother whispered to him as the comb hit a snarl of his flaxen hair and tugged painfully on his scalp. With a gentle nudge, the comb worked its way through the knot. _“Your hair is a mess.”_

“Yes, sorry, Mom,” he mumbled incoherently. He wasn’t really listening—just savoring the moment. His stepmother may have had no blood in common with him, but she was the kindest and gentlest soul he had ever known and was more family to him than anyone else.

The comb slipped down the nape of his neck and began to travel down his back. A pit opened up in his stomach; a tense twinge in his muscles. Something was wrong.

_“Goodness, you’re filthy; I’ll call one of the servants to draw a bath. Your fur is drenched in blood…”_

His breath grew stale in his lungs, his ribs tight around his heart. His stepmother’s hand rested on his shoulder, but it brought him no comfort as it slid down his arm and curled around his hand.

 _“And how long has it been since you last clipped your hooves?”_ Her voice darkened, turning colder and crueler by the second. _“Or trimmed your tusks? Four years? Good heavens, Dimitri, I’m beginning to think there’s no boy left under all that beast…”_

The sunlight on his face grew cold. Smoke stung his nostrils. Though every impulse fought him, he forced his eyes open. His stepmother stared down at him through hollow eye sockets, her charred-black skin cracking and peeling away from a bleached white skull.

And then he felt his wrists and ankles crack, his kneecaps split, his shoulderblades wrench themselves apart; every column of his spine snapped and popped one by one, as though he was being pulled in two; the scream that ripped itself from his throat was hoarse, pitiful, and mewling as he felt his sinuses explode and his skull rip itself apart beneath his face. He felt the muscle and sinew unspooling from his bones like loose thread pulled from a worn woolen tunic; itching, bristling needles forcing their way up out of his skin to stand on end in the cold air; his head splitting as new teeth, sharp and long, forced themselves out of his jaw.

He snapped awake, darkness and gloom flooding in as the afterimage of the ghastly visage faded from his sight. His chest heaved; his heart fluttered like a hummingbird. He pressed his palm to his chest to steady his pulse. But it brought him no comfort; where his hand fell to his skin, he felt hair. _Fur._ Fur crusted with dried blood.

_“Dimitri? Your Highness! You’re awake!”_

He forced himself up onto his feet, stumbling with every uneven, ungainly, aching step; his shallow and ragged breaths struggled to fill his burning lungs. He slipped; his legs crumpled under his weight; his arm screamed bloody murder when it broke his fall—

 _Don’t try to walk on your hind legs; you’re embarrassing yourself._ He could hear Felix’s voice hissing in his ear (he sounded just like Glenn), all but _see_ him looming over him with a cold and disdainful sneer twisting his face. _There’s no hiding it anymore. Everyone can see what I see now—_

He cracked open one eye. A patchwork of muddled gray-brown blurs resolved and sharpened into the face of a giant mouse staring down at him, whiskers twitching apprehensively, round ears twitching forward.

_“Dimitri!”_

No, not a _giant_ mouse. A normal-sized mouse. Annette. That was the voice of Annette, his classmate, calling out to him; the mouse’s face even had the same round, cherubic contours. And just like her, the mouse chirped like a songbird. Reality began to trickle back into his fatigued mind. Claude and his amazing talking mouse, Abyss and the Ashen Wolves, the Plague Rat—

He sighed, half relieved, half forlorn. He’d take being a mouse over a boar any day, but a beast was still a beast.

“You were having a nightmare.” Annette rolled him over onto his back. Filthy, blackened bandages wreathed her right arm and circled her waist; black blossoms of dried blood stained her pale brown fur. “But don’t worry! You’re awake now!”

He was lying on the floor in a small, dark room lit by a single matchstick mounted on a hole in one of the craggy stone walls; one wall was a ragged canvas curtain with faint light bleeding through the edges. The floor was carpeted with a blanket made from rough scraps of cotton cloth that kept away the cold bite of bare stone.

Dimitri tried to sit up, but the world started spinning around him and wouldn’t stop until he stopped. His right forearm whined at him until he stopped putting pressure on it. It was wrapped in a long, ragged strip of cotton from wrist to elbow; a scrap of wood for a makeshift splint kept it straight. It hurt to try and move his fingers. “How long was I out…?”

Claude’s voice rang out. _“Not as long as we expected, that’s for sure.”_ He sat in the corner of the room, his long, thin tail curled loosely around him like a length of whip on the floor. A ragged bandanna circled his head, pinning back one ear; a wad of damp cloth was tied to one of his ankles. Marianne lay at his feet, her pale white fur and periwinkle hair lending her a ghostly appearance. Her fur and hair were matted with dried blood. “We thought you’d be out for the rest of the… day? I _think_ it’s day now. Anyway, good to see you among the living.”

“Before you ask, the good news is none of us got killed,” Hapi said, resting her back against the wall. She gestured to Balthus, who was lying facedown on the floor. “The bad news,” she added, “is that your shy little medic gave everything she had to heal _you_ up and left _him_ to handle everyone else.”

Balthus stirred, his tail lashing lazily and ear twitching, and mumbled something about orange slices with a slurred voice muffled by the carpeting.

“You’re all injured…” Dimitri noted, struggling once again to sit up despite the throbbing of his head. He had to turn his head to see everyone; a fuzzy wall of shadow crept in from the left side of his field of view. When he raised his paw to feel out what was wrong with his eye, he felt a band of gauze spanning across it.

“Oh, don’t worry, they’re all just bloodstains, mostly,” Annette assured him, giving him a ginger, wary pat on the shoulder. “We’re all pretty much healed.” The bandages told a different story, but Dimitri felt he’d get nowhere if he tried to argue.

“And our injuries weren’t very serious in the first place,” Claude chimed in, gesturing to the wet compress tied around his ankle, “at least, not compared to yours, so I figured I’d let Marianne tend to you first.”

“I… Thank you,” Dimitri said. He felt his stomach twist and coil itself around a hollow pit. All this sacrifice, all this blood staining his friends’ bodies, all because he’d lost control and rushed in. All this sacrifice, and for what? So they could all see him for the beast he was? So they could see what Felix had seen during the rebellion two years ago? Back then, with the Tragedy of Duscur still fresh in his young mind, he’d torn through the scattered band of rebels with the savagery of a wild boar—and until the haze had vanished from his mind and he’d come to his senses amid the dead and dying, he’d _enjoyed_ it.

That was what he truly was. Everything else was mere deception.

“I’m sorry,” he added. “Please accept my apology, Claude. It’s my fault you all had to rush in after me…”

Hapi let out a scornful little laugh. “Just because you’re a prince doesn’t mean the world revolves around you, Didi. B and I could’ve run away if we wanted to.” She clutched her ribs and winced. “Maybe we should’ve. But that’s hindsight for you…”

“We couldn’t let what was happening go on, anyway,” Claude said. “You rushing in like that didn’t make much of a difference, really. And it worked out—sort of. While you were keeping the Plague Rat off our backs, we managed to beat back those raiders and save the rest of the camp.”

That was Claude, alright—he made everything fit into his plans, even things that worked against him. _Especially_ those. Yet his smile never reached his eyes, and this time was no different; but now to Dimitri it looked especially false. Meanwhile, Hapi eyed him warily and Annette flinched at the sight of him.

 _They’re all animals, but you’re the wildest of them all,_ the ghost of Glenn hissed in his ear. _You disgust them. You’ve failed them just as you’ve failed us. They’re afraid of you._

“I need to take a walk,” he said, trying once again to sit up. The third time was the charm, and emboldened, he picked his spear up off the floor and held it like a walking stick to prop himself up.

“Are you sure?” Annette asked. “I’ll come with you in case you fall down or need help—”

“Alone,” he insisted. His head hurt. It always did when the ghosts started to wail. He clutched the haft of his spear and trudged over to the curtain, shrugging it aside.

The dim torchlight which lit the crevice beyond the curtain was blinding for a second or two before Dimitri’s eyes adjusted. The room he’d left was carved out of a hollow space in the wall at the bottom of a canyon cleaved into one of Abyss’ endless corridors. Tents, makeshift huts of sticks and cloth, clung to the canyon’s walls; mice milled about dressed in robes and tunics made from rags and scraps as they went about their business. Fortunately, none of the mice paid him any mind.

He sat down, leaned against the brick wall, and unwrapped the gauze that circled his head and covered his left eye. A dark splotch of blood stood out in the middle of the grimy ribbon.

He blinked. The black wall pressing in from the left didn’t disappear. He blinked a few more times as though to clear his eyes, then rubbed his eye with his knuckle. Still nothing. With mounting horror, he closed his eyes and reached up and let his fingertips probe around his eye socket, trying very hard to be mindful of his claws. His fingers pressed painfully into the bone circling his eye; within the socket, hidden under his eyelid, he felt the soft, yielding pressure of his eyeball. At least it seemed physically intact. But he couldn’t see out of it.

A pale white snout poked its way out from behind the curtain, nose and whiskers twitching as it sniffed the air. The snout was followed by a set of clawed pink fingers curling around the corner of the stone wall and another pink paw pulling aside the curtain. The rest of the head peeked out and peered around the corner.

“Your Highness,” Marianne whispered, her voice meek and hoarse. Her brown eyes were wide and wet, like a doe’s eyes; the braids that kept her pale blue hair up were frayed, some nearly undone, and her bangs hung over her forehead, sticky with blood.

Dimitri said nothing. He looked away. Marianne crept closer, bundling herself up in the ragged black cloak she’d torn from her uniform. “May I…” she mumbled timidly. “I’m sorry… Prince Dimitri, may I see your eye?”

“I’m fine,” he said to her. “If you have the strength to spare, tend to your own house leader.”

“I have. He insisted.” She knelt down in front of him and offered him her paw. “Please, may I finish my work?”

Relenting, he offered her his right forearm. “My eye isn’t bothering me,” he lied. “But my arm… if you could take another look at it…”

Marianne nodded and gingerly unwrapped the splint. Dimitri winced and hissed as the wrapping tugged on scabbed-over flesh that had stuck to it. There was still a deep, livid gash in his arm. He wasn’t sure if he could see bone at the bottom or if it was just his eyes— _eye_ —playing tricks on him.

“It was worse last night,” she explained to him. “It… I’m sorry… the knife sawed clean through your ulna. It might still be fractured, hence the splint…”

Dimitri nodded.

“I beg your forgiveness, and the Goddess’ forgiveness. If you hadn’t had to push me out of the way…”

“No, it wasn’t your fault,” he assured her.

Marianne placed her paw over the wound, closed her eyes, and muttered an incantation. Dimitri felt a sharp, eye-watering stab of pain almost as bad as the Plague Rat’s blade, but only for a split second before a wave of numbing warmth ran through his arm all the way up to his shoulder. Flesh knitted itself together, sinews and muscle fibers stretching across the walls of the gash and pulling both sides in like thread on a needle working through a tear in his clothing. The scabby crevice whittled itself away, flakes of dried blood falling from his skin; golden fur grew back to hide it.

The warmth and numbness faded and Marianne leaned back and released his arm. Dimitri wriggled his fingers—painlessly—and poked at where the gash had been—painfully. He winced.

“The bone must still be weak,” she said, bowing her head and letting out a ragged, shallow sigh. “I’m sorry.”

He gave his arm an experimental flex. It hurt, but it was usable. At worst, the bone might have been a little bruised, but it seemed structurally sound enough that it wouldn’t fail him in battle. “Don’t worry; I think it’ll hold up,” he assured her. “At any rate, it’s better than it was. Thank you.”

“And your eye…”

“I’ll live with just one for now, thank you,” he said, not wanting to strain her again.

“No, no, please.” She reached up. Dimitri instinctively turned his head to hide his eye from her. “Let me try again.”

“I’d prefer if you didn’t waste the effort.”

“But you’re a prince—”

A bitter laugh escaped his lips. “You saw what I am. You and everyone else. A beast.”

“I know. I did. And…I thought I was the only one.”

“Huh?” Dimitri looked at Marianne, studying the melancholy look on her face and droop of her ears, the shame in her hunched shoulders and downcast eyes. He recalled how she’d looked when their paths had crossed in battle—bloodied, crazed, her eyes blank and lacking in any sign of wit or reason save for the most basic feral impulses. She’d looked the way he’d felt.

Marianne sat in front of him and folded her paws in her lap as though praying. “Your Highness, will you promise not to repeat what I say to you here?” she asked, her already-faint voice growing even quieter.

Dimitri leaned forward to better hear her, still gingerly favoring his right arm. “Yes, of course. You have my word.”

“I bear a curse from the Goddess. A baleful Crest which brings nothing but misfortune to its bearers and all who come near them. You may have heard of it. It is the Crest of the Beast.”

He nodded. He’d heard the story. In addition to the Ten Elites whose bloodlines had formed the basis of Fódlan's system of nobility, there had been an eleventh legendary hero who had done battle against Nemesis. But the eleventh great hero, Maurice, had lost control of his powers and transformed into a great monster, slaughtering all who crossed his path. For that, his name had been stricken from history. Officially, his bloodline had long since terminated—he’d left no heirs—but according to legends, there were those who bore his Crest and could themselves transform into beasts.

“You’re a descendant of…” he said. Marianne nodded hastily as though to urge him to be silent. “But how does no one know about it? Surely Professor Hanneman would have—”

Marianne shook her head. “My adoptive father paid a large sum of money to the Church to cover up the existence of my Crest. But no amount of money can purge it from my body. Nothing can quell the compulsion that sings in my blood. That’s why… I try to avoid battle. It tries so hard to come out…”

“I’m sorry,” Dimitri said. For so many, including him, Crests were a sign of power, of rightful authority; they were the boons of the Goddess. In Faerghus, to have a Crest and a Hero’s Relic tied to it was to have a noble obligation as a living weapon to defend the kingdom. But he had learned from his fellow Blue Lions classmates that it was more complicated than that. Some people suffered for want of a Crest, like Sylvain’s late brother, who'd been driven mad with jealousy by his younger brother’s good fortune and turned to a life of rape and pillage. Others suffered for _having_ one, like Ingrid, who desperately wanted to be a knight and yet was pressured by her family, as its sole Crest-bearing heir, to simply marry well and be a mother to Crest-bearing children. But what could anyone do about it?

“Unfortunately for me, I can’t blame my… compulsion on the situation of my birth,” he said. “But I do know what it feels like to lose control. I know what it means to be a civilized mask over the face of an animal. I know the shame you must feel.”

Marianne sighed, then reached out for him. “May I please…”

This time, Dimitri relented. If it would make her feel more useful… “Go ahead.” He closed his eyes and leaned in.

She placed her palm against his ruined left eye and a warm, numbing wave washed through his head; when it was done, she slumped over, falling to his shoulder. “Is it… better?” she asked.

He opened his eyes. He could see through his left eye again, but only muddled, desaturated blurs; the torchlight above split into a searing, cross-shaped bar, and black speckles threaded through his vision. It was disorientating, dizzying; when he moved his head to get a better look, he felt a throbbing ache run through his head and a wave of vertigo seize his stomach.

“It’s not an improvement,” he admitted. “I don’t mean to impugn your skills, but it… hurts now to look through it.” As Marianne’s face fell, he took the ribbon of cloth and wrapped it around his eye again, sparing him the discomfort of the half-functional eye. “But I’m sure you’ve made Professor Manuela’s job much easier for when we make it back to the monastery. From one beast to another… thank you.”

Marianne almost smiled.

* * *

As important as finding Edelgard was, Claude had a new mystery on his paws that excited him just as much. Before he and the Plague Rat had warped away, Myson had mentioned finding something in this camp that was ‘almost as important’ as Edelgard, and _that_ had his curiosity piqued. What did they want with Edelgard, anyway? It had sounded like all the Plague Rat wanted was to _kill_ her, but Myson seemed to want more from her than just her life. What situation had she gotten herself embroiled into here?

Nobody he and Dimitri talked to said anything about any of their possessions being stolen, although Claude had to admit that most of these mice didn’t have many things _to_ steal. Nobody had seen any of Myson’s forces _take_ anything either outside of a few bags of grain and a couple weapons and tools, so Claude assumed that either what they’d found had been small enough to hide in one’s robes, or Myson must have used a warp spell to transport it.

His search came to an end inside the biggest tent in the camp, not because he found anything in there, but because it was the last place he still had to look.

The inside of the tent was in disarray. Claude had to light a match to get a good look at the place. A table in the center had collapsed, its legs snapped like twigs; scraps of parchment littered the floor. The curtain in back had fallen away, revealing an alcove made from a missing brick in the wall just like the one he and his friends had holed up in for the night. In the alcove was a mess of blankets, a fragment of mirror, and a ladder leaning against one rough stone wall.

Still stepping lightly on the ankle he’d sprained last night (though the power of his Crest had mostly healed it by now), Claude rifled through the pages scattered on the floor. Perhaps what Myson had found had been a document of some kind, like a map.

He ruled out the map hypothesis soon enough, though, because the first thing he found was a map of Abyss. For the first time, he could get a sense of Abyss as a whole—all of its tunnels and corridors, the scattered and winding paths that looked more like an old town than anything else, the secret tunnels and cracks in the walls that mice and mice alone could slip through…

“Abyss is… bigger than I expected,” Dimitri remarked, staring at the map over Claude’s shoulder. He seemed crestfallen by that observation, and Claude couldn’t blame him.

That was an understatement. This place was _huge._ Its network of tunnels and crumbling ruins spanned the outer walls of the monastery itself, and that was a big enough plot of land for _humans._ Without any leads, finding Edelgard down here would be like traversing all of Riegan county on foot.

If there was one bright spot to this map, if Claude’s intuition about the monastery’s layout was correct, this camp wasn’t far from the dining hall, and thus the kitchens and scullery—not horizontally, anyway (who knew how far _above_ them the monastery was?). In fact, there looked to be a hole in the wall probably an hour’s walk from here that led into… was it the cellar?

And now that he thought of it, hadn’t he heard a rumor that a missing student’s uniform had been found there yesterday morning? He looked closer and his spirits fell. There was a hastily-scribbled X over the path to the cellar and a warning about cats, triple-underlined, so it probably wasn’t the quick exit he’d hoped for.

Still, he couldn’t discount the advantage this map could give him, so he rolled it up and slipped it into a satchel he’d taken from the cannibal town last night. If Myson hadn’t taken it, that meant he probably had a map of his own; this could level the playing field.

The other documents weren’t really _documents,_ per se… more like doodles. Hasty sketches in black ink drawn with a shaky hand (or rather, paw) depicting a mouse with a long mane, furnished with epaulets and a waist-length half-cape draped over one shoulder, wielding in one paw an ornate axe…

Claude studied the drawing. Those familiar ornaments, the cape, that mane, that axe… It couldn’t be.

“That’s Edelgard,” Dimitri gasped, snatching the sketch out of his paws. His eye lit up. “That’s her, I’m sure of it!”

_“Ahem. Can I help ya?”_

The voice calling out to him sounded the exact opposite of helpful. In fact, all Claude could do in response to it was sheepishly turn around like a child who’d just been caught sneaking a treat as Dimitri hastily stowed the sketch away.

“I don’t know, _can_ you?” Claude answered.

Ezekiel, or ‘Zeke,’ as most of the camp called him, stepped into the tent, his arms crossed. He was pretty tall for a mouse, about Dimitri’s size, and as crisscrossed with scars as the Plague Rat; one ear was notched, one ear was worn away to a nub, and one eye was covered by a ragged eyepatch. Last night’s battle had left a few fresh scars, though it was hard to discern them from all the others.

“So,” he said to Claude and Dimitri, “what’re ya doin’ in my brother’s room?”

“One of the raiders last night said something about taking something important from this camp,” Claude explained. “I figured I’d do a little investigating and see what was missing.”

“Huh. Sounds like somethin’ a thief’d say.” Zeke let out a derisive little snort and tried to right the table, noticed its legs were broken, and promptly gave up. “Sure made themselves at home, huh? So what’s missin’?”

“A map,” Claude answered with complete honesty.

Zeke squinted at him, while Dimitri gave him a sour, sidelong look, one that seemed to say, _‘Really, Claude? Have you no shame?’_

At the very least, it was good that Dimitri was back to his old self.

“I mean, all these documents,” he said, gesturing to the papers littering the floor, “and not a map among them… pretty clear what they took, huh? Assuming there was one to begin with. It sounds like a pretty reasonable assumption to make.”

“Ugh. Great.” Zeke sighed. “Mattie’s gonna chew me out when he gets back. Y’know how embarrassing it is t’ be chewed out by yer _younger_ brother?”

“Oh, yeah. Back at home, I got it a lot from just about everyone, older _and_ younger.” Claude had had a big family back in Almyra, although in the interest of keeping that part of himself hidden from Fódlan folks, he never had much liberty to go into detail. “So these drawings are Mattie’s,” he noted, gesturing to a sketch.

Zeke picked up one of the sketches off the floor. “Oh, he’s gonna be pissed when he sees this. He’s, uh… well, y’know artsy types.”

Claude nodded. That fit one of his classmates to a T. He’d never seen this ‘Mattie’ guy before, but the mental image he had of him was of Ignatz as a mouse, glasses and all. “Yeah, I know artsy types.” He looked down at the scattered pages. About half of what he could see were axe-wielding mice with fluttering capes and flowing manes. “Kind of, uh…”

“Obsessed?”

“No, I wasn’t—”

Zeke laughed. “I mean… yeah. Few months ago, he scurried over to me one night and said he’d just seen the most amazing thing. Fer a while, it was all he could talk about. This beautiful white warrior strikin’ down wicked folks left n’ right. Said it was more vivid than any dream.” His tone grew dour; he took a seat on an intact stool and kicked at one of the sketches. “Was ‘round the time those raiders started attackin’. I figured, yeah, let the kid have his savior.”

“Savior? So he had some kind of religious vision?” Dimitri interjected.

“If ya wanna call it that, yeah. Made for a fun story t’ tell the pups. An’ the adults, too. Kept us hopin’, kept us entertained.” Zeke sighed. “Til she actually went n’ _showed up.”_

Claude quelled his excitement. So Edelgard _had_ been here! “So what you’re saying is, you and Miss Savior don’t exactly get along.”

“Hah! As if I could get along with that stuck-up, self-obsessed, holier’n-thou, ‘I-know-best,’ thin-skinned, pompous, haughty…” Zeke rattled off a list of epithets.

“Yes, that sounds like Edelgard to me,” Dimitri said.

“You _know_ her?”

“Well… not very well,” Claude admitted. “We’re in the same school.”

“Hmph.” Zeke scowled. “Should’ve known you n’ yer lot were ‘temporarily embarrassed humans,’ too.”

Dimitri wrinkled his nose at the sound of the turn of phrase he’d coined, unaccustomed to having his own words thrown back in his face even if it was only by coincidence.

“Not a fan?” Claude retorted, guarded.

“‘Not a fan?’ _‘Not a fan?’”_ Zeke rose from his seat, towering over Claude and nearly coming to Dimitri’s height. “You humans spend yer whole lives treatin’ us like _pests,_ thinkin’ you can just trample all over us, and then ya come down here and think you’ve got _all_ the answers! But y’know what? Th’ only reason last night happened was because _Edelgard_ went out an’ did things _her_ way an’ _they_ decided to retaliate!” He punctuated every exclamation by jabbing an accusing finger into Claude’s chest. “If we’d just handled ‘em like we always do yesterday mornin’, I wouldn’t have had a dozen bodies t’ get rid of last night! All you do is bring all yer human troubles with ya, and _we_ gotta put up with it, an’ then you solve ‘em and act like it makes y’all _heroes!”_

Dimitri grabbed Zeke by the wrist. He must have had a _very_ firm grip, because Zeke gasped and started trying to pull his paw free with a tinge of panic on his face. “That’s enough! I understand that you are angry, but we _helped_ you last night—”

“Dimitri.” Claude tapped him on the shoulder. “Let Zeke go and leave the talking to me.” He wiped the errant spittle from his fur. “Point taken, Zeke. But trust me, we don’t intend to linger. As soon as we find Edelgard, we’re out of your hair. Er, fur. All of us. For good.”

“Huh. Well, I want you n’ your lot outta my fur _now.”_

“Alright. Well, fastest way to do that is to help us, so where can we find Edelgard?”

“Hell if I know. She yelled at her li’l friend so hard she ran off screamin’ an’ cryin’, an’ then she roped Mattie into runnin’ after the poor doe with her. Been gone all night, so who knows? Maybe they’re dead.”

Dimitri frowned. “Oh. I-I’m sorry. I didn’t realize it was such a touchy subject.”

“Touchy?” Zeke rolled his eye. “Yeah, pretty _touchy_ knowin’ yer brother might be dead ‘cause you didn’t tell him to knock off the whole savior shit when you had the chance.”

Cowed, Dimitri bowed his head. “I understand; you have every right to be upset. Please accept our sincerest apologies. If it’s any consolation, I’m sure your brother is in safe ha—”

“No.” Zeke pointed to the tentflaps. “Out.”

“You heard the man,” Claude said, grabbing Dimitri by the arm. “Er, mouse.”

Zeke’s one-eyed glare followed the two of them out of the tent. Claude snuffed out and tossed aside the match he’d been using as a torch before it burned down to his fingers.

Glum, Dimitri tugged at the scrap of cloth that covered his left eye. “I fear we’ve come little closer to finding Edelgard than before. Even with a map, how can we know where she’s gone?”

“Okay, Dimitri. You’ve got to tell me why you’re so concerned about Edelgard. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you two hold a complete conversation as long as we’ve been at Garreg Mach.” Claude winked. “Does somebody have a crush?”

“I-It’s nothing like that,” Dimitri stammered. Though he cut a fearsome figure (for a mouse) with the bloody bandages circling his head to cover his eye and various other nicks and scratches left over from last night’s battle, and his golden fur certainly lent him a proud and regal air (again, for a mouse)—or rather, it _would_ have if it wasn’t so crusted with brown and black speckles of dirt and blood that he looked like a spotted hyena—he looked _adorably_ innocent when he was flustered. “A crush… Goddess almighty, how your mind wanders to such fanciful things. And how do you know we never talk? Have you been spying on us?”

Claude said nothing.

Dimitri crossed his arms. “…Of course you have. No. No, I do not have a _crush_ on her.”

“The more you deny it without telling me what’s really between you two,” Claude retorted, “the more I’ll just think it’s puppy love.”

“Oh, please,” Dimitri huffed.

“I’ll tell you one of my secrets if you tell me yours.”

“I’m not interested in knowing any of your secrets.”

“Really? Not even something you could use against me in the future?”

“Perish the thought!”

Claude shrugged. “A poor king you’ll make.”

“You are testing my patience.” Dimitri rubbed his forehead, brushing his straw-colored bangs out of his eyes. “Fine. Fine. But you must keep this a secret.”

“My lips are sealed.”

“She’s my… I mean, I knew her a long time ago.”

“Figured.”

“She and her mother came to Fhirdiad about ten years ago,” Dimitri said, “fleeing unrest in Enbarr; she lived in the city with her uncle. She was so lonely… I think I was the only friend she had in all of Faerghus, and for the year she spent there, I would say she was one of my best. At the end of the year, despite how much she disliked living in Fhirdiad, she seemed just as upset to leave. She acted like she was simply trading one prison for another. And so before parting ways, I… oh, never mind.”

“What did you do?”

“Oh, it’s… embarrassing.”

“What?”

“I gave her a dagger and told her to use it to cut her own path and live her own life. But that is beside the point.” Dimitri spat out the words like he was trying to shove somebody out a window. He looked down at the floor. “I… I never saw El again until Garreg Mach. In many ways she hadn’t changed, but she seemed so distant and unapproachable, as though she didn’t know me at all; and her hair had turned stark white…”

“You gave her a _dagger?”_

“Laugh if you must; Felix and Sylvain do. ‘Prince Dimitri woos girls with cold steel instead of flowers…’”

“Laugh? I think it’s sweet,” Claude said. “And I think it’s sweet that you’d go this far for her. And if you ever need some situation engineered to help you two reconnect, I can think of a few schemes just off the top of my head, like I could lock you two in a cabin in the woods—”

If not for the fur (and the colorblindness), Dimitri’s cheeks would have lit up red. “I—That is unnecessary. I… am not the boy she would have remembered anyway, even if she did. It’s no wonder she didn’t recognize me. In light of that, I’m not sure myself why I’m down here looking for her in the first place.”

“So, you said you _didn’t_ have a crush on her, but—”

“I don’t!” he protested hotly. “I-It isn’t like that, Claude.”

“Riiight. You were ‘just friends.’”

Dimitri shook his head and shot Claude an annoyed glare. “She’s my _stepsister. There._ I said it.”

“Oh.” Claude couldn’t say he hadn’t _expected_ that answer, but it still took him by surprise. “Well, that’s why you’re down here! You’ve got to look after your family—”

Dimitri suddenly looked as though he’d swallowed a lemon whole, and it was then that Claude remembered—while he didn’t know all the details, he knew that Dimitri had lost his parents in a terrorist attack about four years ago. Claude mentally kicked himself for his lapse in judgment.

“Yes,” Dimitri said, speaking in terse, clipped tones. “You’ve got to.”

Claude reached up to give him a consoling pat on the shoulder. “Well, c’mon, Your Great and Majestic Royalness; the sooner we get back to looking for her, the sooner we’ll find her.”

“Right.” Dimitri nodded. “Oh, and Claude—not a word of this to anyone.”

“Well, if you wanted me to keep it a secret, you should’ve agreed to our trade. A secret for a secret.”

He sighed. “Fine. Claude, tell me your secret.”

“Which one?”

“How many do you have?”

“Got a few days?”

“Just tell me one. Any of them.”

“Well, for starters, ‘Claude’ isn’t my real name…” Claude said with a sly little wink.

“What _is_ your real name, then?”

“Oh, that’s another secret.”

Dimitri sighed again. “Of course.”

_“Dimitri, Claude!”_

Annette came running up to them, breathless, eyes wide. Dimitri grabbed her. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

 _“She’s here!”_ she gasped, placing a paw to her chest as she caught her breath. “Edelgard is…”

The crowd ahead parted and through it strode the most beautiful mouse Claude had ever seen. So unparalleled, so graceful, that even the ragged and filthy cloak and robes hanging from her shoulders couldn’t spoil it. With glossy, sleek, almost _silken_ white fur and a long white mane that fell far past her shoulders and cascaded over her back like a waterfall, piercing and cold lavender eyes gazing from behind a forest of fine gossamer whiskers sprouting from her cheeks, a long pink tail trailing gracefully behind her with every step, and a gleaming and ornate axe resting in one paw, it was easy to tell _exactly_ who she was.

Edelgard von Hresvelg, in the flesh. Even if there _was_ substantially less of it now. She really looked _exactly_ like Matthias’ sketches—eerily so, if he had indeed started drawing them long before he’d met her.

A gray-brown mouse with a tousled mop of dark hair peered out from over her shoulder, so timid that Claude could tell from one look at her that she could give Marianne a run for her money. As soon as he so much as glanced at her, she hid away behind Edelgard.

“Well, well, well,” Claude said with a smirk. _“We_ trudge through sewage to get here, and _you_ come out smelling of roses.” He sniffed the air. “Er… lilac?”

Edelgard’s pale gaze pierced through him like an arrow. Her eyes widened and her mouth hung open. _“Claude?”_ she gasped.

“The one and only,” Claude answered her. “Lady Edelgard, I presume?”

Dimitri cleared his throat and awkwardly bowed his head. “Hello, Edelgard.”

Edelgard merely looked even more confused. She wrinkled her nose and her brow. _“Dimitri?”_

“We came here to rescue you,” Claude finished. “You’re welcome.”

“Y-You did? Is that so?” Edelgard pulled back her rapidly escaping composure and crossed her arms. “I can’t help but notice that you’re both mice now, and…” She sniffed the air and gagged. “What… did you say about… _sewage?”_

“Well, yeah, some complications arose,” Claude told her. “I’d explain the whole story to you over brunch, but we’ve just been kinda… evicted, so…”

“I should have expected _you_ of all people would end up like this, Claude,” she said, “but _you_ as well, Dimitri?”

“I was… trying to keep him out of trouble,” Dimitri sheepishly explained.

A short brown mouse in a ragged monastic robe with a sword and bundle of matches at his hip rushed to Edelgard’s side. “Edelgard! Are these friends of yours?”

“No, we just attend the same school,” Edelgard clarified. Claude glanced at Dimitri to see if he could spot any lingering disappointment on the prince’s face.

“Well, it’s nice to meet you two,” the mouse said, darting in front of Edelgard to shake their hands. “My name’s Matthias. I’m sort of the leader of this camp, I guess. When my brother’s out or sleeping, that is. He’s more of the take-charge type. So you’re, uh… Dimitri?”

 _“He’s_ Dimitri,” Claude said, pointing at Dimitri. “I’m Claude.” He had to admit, he was a little let down that Matthias didn’t look a thing like Ignatz.

“Right, right. Nice to meet you, Claude! You, too, Dimitri! Now, uh, have either of you seen my brother around? He’s a little taller than both of you, one ear, one eye—kinda like you, Dimitri—got almost as many scars as fur—oh, boy, you should hear how he got ‘em all, each one’s got a story behind it! Oh, and his…”

“So you’re Mattie,” Dimitri said. “Your brother’s been worried about you.”

Matthias’ eyes lit up. “He has? Where is he?”

_“Mattie!”_

_“Zeke!”_

Zeke roughly shoved Claude and Dimitri aside and swept Matthias up in a lung-crushing embrace strong enough to make his eyes bulge. “Mattie! Saints be fuckin’ praised, I thought you’da snuffed it out there!”

“Urgh… n-not me,” Matthias squeaked, trying to wriggle out of his brother’s grip. “Not with Edelgard with me…”

Zeke dropped him to the floor, then noticed Edelgard. “Ah. _Edelgard.”_ He sounded out every syllable as though spitting it in her face.

Edelgard glared daggers at him. “You.”

Matthias grabbed Zeke by the arm and tried to pull him away before anything happened between him and Edelgard. “Anyway, boy, Zeke, you should’ve been there! We met the Ashen Wolves! Y’know, nothing special, just our archenemies for the past like forever. But Edelgard and I gave them a pretty good fight and now we’re friends! We had a really nice long talk, or rather _I_ did with their leader, and they’ve totally promised not to squish us or set traps for us or any of the other unpleasant things they’ve been doing, on account of they’re all mice now, too—”

Zeke’s ear twitched. “Whoa, whoa, slow down, Mattie. I caught like two words o’ that slurry of a sentence. C’mon, tell it to me slowly.” With that, he dragged his brother off, shooting Edelgard one last sidelong glance.

“I take it we’ve got a lot to catch up on, too?” Claude asked Edelgard. “Looks like our eviction’s been postponed, so how about we all head back to our place and chat?”

* * *

The labyrinthine corridors of Abyss passed Byleth by. Here and there were sparse signs of human habitation—tents, lean-tos, and huts built into ragged alcoves formed in the walls, rooms filled with broken and dusty furniture, all towering over the mice—but no humans. Dotting the floor were the corpses of mice and rats in various stages of decay, some fresh, some reduced to skeletons, some still gripping tiny weapons and clad in tiny cloaks.

“Signs of humans,” Sothis mused from within her head, “but no humans. Has Tomas and his minions turned everybody in Abyss into mice?”

“We’re going in circles,” Caspar moaned. “I’ve seen that exact same torch like five times already!” He threw up his paws.

“No, it’s been a different torch every time,” Linhardt assured him.

“Same torch or not, that doesn’t mean we aren’t lost,” Lysithea fumed. To say she was unhappy about being a mouse, it seemed, was an understatement, and her bad mood seemed to spill over into every other topic under the sun. “We’re getting farther and farther away from Hilda and the others with every step! Professor, are we lost?”

“Of course not,” Alois interjected before Byleth could answer. “Right, Professor?” he asked, giving her an expectant look.

Byleth lifted the Sword of the Creator high and let its bony, segmented blade glow with fiery light, casting its light wider across the vast caverns of Abyss. “Don’t worry,” she assured the rest of the team. “I know exactly where we are.”

“Oh?” Sothis asked. Byleth couldn’t help but notice that she hadn’t tried to manifest outside her head at all since earlier this morning, likely because she was embarrassed about being a mouse. “If you know exactly where we are, then perhaps you should inform _me.”_

Byleth didn’t answer.

“I knew it! We _are_ lost!” Sothis sighed. “If only you had used my power as soon as we had fallen into that snare…”

 _After you’d scolded me for using all of your power for the day to get through a performance review with Seteth, I’d decided only to use that power in life-threatening situations,_ Byleth reminded her.

“Yes, but—”

_Everyone is still alive._

“You, Byleth, are incorrigible.”

“I wonder,” Linhardt mused, staring up at the glowing sword in Byleth’s paw, “why the Sword of the Creator transformed along with the Professor, but Thunderbrand did not. Perhaps there’s something about the Sword of the Creator—perhaps the conspicuous absence of its Crest Stone? Or perhaps the anomaly is Thunderbrand…”

Catherine sighed. Apparently, Linhardt had been pestering her about her sword for a long time; he had a singular obsession with studying Crests and Heroes’ Relics that belied how little interest he could have in almost everything else. “For the last time, kid—mouse or human, you aren’t getting your grubby paws on Thunderbrand. These things aren’t just objects to be examined and dissected, they’re holy relics that have been blessed by the Goddess Sothis herself. You _know_ the price of misusing them.”

Byleth looked down at the Sword of the Creator grasped in her paw. “I do not recall blessing any of these weapons—not Thunderbrand, not the Lance of Ruin, and certainly not that awful Sword of the Creator,” Sothis said to her, her disembodied voice ringing in her ears. “My skin crawls just looking at that blade. If anything, it is _cursed.”_

Byleth nodded in agreement. This sword was unsettling at best. And it _demanded_ of her in ways no normal sword did. It was lighter than expected, swifter than one would think given its shape and size, and yet she always felt so oddly _drained_ after using it—a strange hollow sensation that dwelt in her chest as though the sword had scooped out of her body a pound of flesh.

“I hardly think proper research and diligent study constitutes misuse,” Linhardt said to Catherine, completely undeterred. “What offense could the Goddess take in our wanting to further understand these things?”

“An heirloom of the Ten Elites deserves more respect. And that is my final word on the subject, Linhardt,” she scolded him. “Professor, he’s _your_ student; talk some sense into him.”

“Yeah, cut it out, Linhardt,” Caspar piped up, rapping his knuckles on the other mouse’s shoulder. “She’s the greatest knight in all of Fódlan; show some respect!”

“Ow.” Linhardt gingerly rubbed his shoulder. “Point taken…”

“And Catherine, if you let _me_ use Thunderbrand,” Caspar added, “I-I’d decline out of respect, not just because I don’t have the right Crest for it!”

Byleth hid an inward smile. Caspar followed Catherine around the way a puppy might follow its owner; if it wouldn’t have been heresy to do so, he would have probably worshiped her as a goddess. No matter what Hubert said to the contrary, being a mouse didn’t suit him.

Catherine let out a flattered laugh. “That’s sweet of you, Caspar. Speaking of Thunderbrand, though… Professor, are you sure it’ll be safe with your students?”

“Of course,” Byleth assured her. “Petra’s hands are good hands. Of all the Black Eagles, she’s the most responsible.”

“I can be responsible, too,” Caspar muttered.

“Yes,” Linhardt said. “When something breaks, you’re usually responsible.”

Catherine only looked a little less concerned. “I guess I’ll just have to trust you, Professor. Or, rather, I’ll have to trust your trust in your students. It’s not like I could lug that thing around in my condition anyway.”

Something skittered in the darkness up ahead; Byleth held out her arm to hold the others back. Her whiskers picked up subtle motions in the air currents and a musty scent stung her nostrils. “Linhardt, Lysithea, up here with me.”

“Maybe the knights should—” Linhardt began.

“Professor’s the only one with a weapon, and us two are the only ones with magic,” Lysithea reasoned. “We will have to step up front.”

Linhardt sighed. “Please be nothing,” he mumbled as he headed past the knights and flanked Byleth to her left. Lysithea had no complaints as she took her spot at Byleth’s right.

Two mice emerged from the dark, both standing on their hind legs. They wore odd clothing—not odd in the sense that it was unfamiliar, but odd in the sense that it _was_ familiar. One wore a dirty periwinkle dress with a ragged and stained apron and a bonnet perched atop her head that had seen better days; the other wore a slick suit and a tattered overcoat, and a pair of glasses sat perched on his snout, one lens covered in a spiderweb of cracks.

“Hello!” the mouse-woman said.

“Hello, hello!” the mouse-man chimed in, and both of them scurried past Byleth and circled around the group faster than she could react. “Oh, don’t mind us, don’t mind us at all!”

“We mean you no harm,” his cohort said, “no harm at all! You all seem quite in a state, don’t you? Lost even the clothes off your backs! Poor things.” She eyed Caspar up and down, her whiskers and nose twitching as she sniffed the air. “And you… poor thing, you’re so small! Are you malnourished?”

“Hey! I-I’m not small!” Caspar hotly retorted, readying his fists. “And I’m not malnourished, either!”

“But you,” the mouse-man said, brushing a paw through Lysithea’s mane, “what lovely fur! A shame to see you so destitute!”

Lysithea pulled herself away and readied an orb of miasma in her paw. “Get back! Don’t touch me!”

Byleth held her sword to the mouse’s neck. “Do as she says.”

The mouse backed off and coughed into his paw, eyeing the bony blade of the Sword of the Creator warily. “Ah, my apologies. Sincerest apologies. Dearest, grandest, most eloquentest apologies.”

“It has been so long since we have seen friendly mice down here,” the other one said, though Caspar clearly wasn’t being friendly to her right about now. “Not since the Plague Rat ran roughshod through Mousebrook. Oh, but where are our manners? I am Ansley Donner,” she said, curtsying.

“And I,” the other mouse said, taking a bow, “am Landry Donner. A pleasure to make your acquaintances, er…”

“Ah! I’m Alois, and my fellow knight here is Catherine,” Alois said, introducing himself and Catherine. “And here we have Professor Byleth, Linhardt, Caspar, and Lysithea.”

Catherine crossed her arms. “Alois…” she said to him sternly, cautioning him.

“Oh, these two are friendly enough!” Alois assured her. “They’re just eager. Isn’t that right, Mister Donner?”

Landry laughed. “Oh, _Mister_ Donner was my father! Just call me Landry, my friend.”

“And yes,” Ansley said, “we’re very, _very_ eager! When Mousebrook fell, we thought we’d never see a civilized mouse again!”

“You two say you are knights?” Landry asked Alois and Catherine. “You two must be very lean and gamy—er, muscular.”

 _“What was that he said?”_ Sothis asked.

“What was that you said?” Byleth repeated to Landry. “Lean and…”

“Muscular, very muscular!” Landry laughed. He patted Alois on the arm. “My, you must be strong, my friend!”

 _“Hmph. I do not trust him,”_ Sothis said. Byleth had to agree.

“Poor dears, you’re all so impoverished!” Ansley plucked at the ribbon Hilda had tied into Lysithea’s mane (she had minced no words about how much she hated it, but had to admit that it did a lot to distinguish her from an ordinary mouse) and sniffed the air. “A lovely silk ribbon, though; you must come from wealth! And to have lost it all save for this, poor thing…” She clucked her tongue.

“If it’s not any trouble, can you tell us if you’ve seen any specific mice around here?” Catherine asked, cutting through all the niceties. “We’re just looking for a few in particular. Their names are Edelgard, Claude, and Dimitri.”

“Oh, I’m afraid their names don’t ring a bell…”

“There are other students missing, too,” Byleth reminded her. “Bernadetta, Annette, and Marianne. Do those names ring a bell?”

Ansley shook her head. “Oh, I’m sorry, no. None of those names sound familiar.”

“Wait!” Landry said. “Edelgard… Edelgard…” He ran the name through his mouth as though tasting it. “Can you describe her for me?”

“She’d look something like Lysithea here,” Byleth said. “That’s all we know.”

“You know, I do think I may have seen her!” Landry said.

“Yes, a white mouse with a long mane! I do believe she may have passed us by!” Ansley chimed in. “Why don’t you come by our camp and we can consult our visitor’s record?”

“Er… ‘visitor’s record?’” Linhardt inquired, suspicious.

“We ran an inn back in Mousebrook,” Landry said, beaming. “Best inn in the underground! Service to die for!”

“And it didn’t cost an arm and a leg!” Ansley chimed in, also beaming. “Hospitality is our game, even if we don’t have an inn anymore!”

“We insist on providing nothing but the comforts of home to passersby, no matter our situation!” Landry added.

“In sickness and in health,” Ansley chirped, “in feast or in famine!”

“Hmm…” Linhardt scratched his chin. “We _have_ been walking for a long time…”

“Oh, yes! A safe place to catch a break would be perfect!” Alois said.

Catherine narrowed her eyes. “Hold on. This is a little _too_ convenient. You two are up to something, aren’t you?”

“Us?” Landry gasped.

 _“Us?”_ Ansley gasped. “Heavens, no! We’re honest businessmice!”

“Oh, come on, Catherine,” Alois said, giving his fellow knight a hearty pat on the back. “You can always depend on the kindness of strangers!”

“The kindness of strangers _is_ our business,” Landry assured her. “And we’ve depended on quite a lot of it ourselves in these trying times. Come, come! We don’t have much to offer, but…”

“We would _love_ to have you all for lunch!” Ansley said.

At the sound of _lunch,_ Byleth felt her stomach churn and growl. Had it been so long since breakfast?

Evidently, similar hunger pangs were on Catherine’s mind as well, because she relented. “Okay,” she said, “but no funny business, or you’ll taste the edge of my blade—” Her paw fell to her hip, where Thunderbrand usually rested, but met empty air. “Or… claws. Fangs and claws. That’s a warning.”

“No need to warn us!” Landry insisted. “But if it makes you more comfortable, warn us all you like! Come along, come along!” He and his cohort scurried back into the darkness. _“This way!”_

“I don’t trust ‘em,” Caspar said, scowling, “but _man_ am I hungry.”

Byleth nodded in agreement. “Be on your guard, everyone,” she said, and she led the others after Ansley and Landry.

As Byleth, the knights, and the students wandered through the corridors behind the two businessmice, Lysithea stumbled over a corpse resting on the floor—a mouse clad in black robes and wearing a beaked facemask like an Imperial mage—and let out a shrill shriek. Byleth was at her side in an instant. “You alright?”

Lysithea nodded and backed away from her, even though her chest was heaving and her breath ragged from fright. “Yes, yes, of course,” she said. “Of course I am. I was simply startled. That’s it.”

Alois sighed. “Ah, thank heavens. You sounded like you’d seen a ghost!”

Lysithea blanched, even more terrified. “I—Wh—” She whirled around, her silken white mane whipping around her. “G-Ghost? Where?”

“Oh, um—sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you,” Alois stammered. “Don’t worry; _I’d_ be frightened if I saw a ghost, too!”

“Are you patronizing me?”

“No, no! Of course not! Me, I’m _terrified_ of ghosts! Once, I listened to one of Mercedes’ stories and fainted halfway through!”

“You’re joking.”

“He’s not joking,” Catherine said. “If Alois even so much as glimpses a headstone past sunset, he can’t sleep until sunrise.”

“Well, I’m not afraid of ghosts,” Caspar said, crossing his arms. “If I saw a ghost, I’d punch it in the face!”

“Wouldn’t your fist just go through it?” Linhardt asked him.

“Well—yeah,” he admitted, “but I think my confidence alone would scare it off! You’re looking at one guy who can’t be spooked!”

“Except by a summer storm,” Linhardt teased him.

“Hey! I’m not _scared_ of thunder, I’m just _startled_ by it!”

“Yes, _that’s_ why you always run under your bed like a puppy as soon as you see lightning flash outside.”

“Liiin! Not always!” Caspar let out an embarrassed groan. “Anyway, Landry, Ansley, how much farther ‘til lunch? I’m starved!”

“Yes, and my paws are really starting to hurt,” Linhardt added.

“Oh, not much farther now,” Landry said. “We’ve got plenty of food to share with you… scones, fruit pies, candied nuts, salted meats, lentils, sugared plums, meat pies…”

“We’re well known for our meat pies!” Ansley added. “And we brew our own mead and ale, so you’ll have plenty to wash it all down with!”

Byleth couldn’t help but salivate. “Think with your head, not with your stomach,” Sothis chastised her.

 _Easy for you to say,_ Byleth thought at her. _You don’t even_ get _hungry._

“Yes…” Sothis yawned. “Is it not strange that I can grow tired, but not hungry? Being incorporeal is simply indescribable to you mortals…”

“Just a little farther,” Landry said, darting ahead.

“Keep up, keep up!” Ansley chimed in, rushing to catch up with him. “Stick together! It won’t be long now!”

The fur on the back of Byleth’s neck stood on end as a cold chill ran down her spine all the way to the tip of her tail. Instinctively, she lifted her head and slashed upward with her sword as a large white mass fell from the ceiling. The Sword of the Creator’s blade telescoped, breaking apart into a dozen wired segments and whipping through the air, slicing a gash in the white mass; but it fell too fast. _“Ghost!”_ Alois cried out.

Just before Byleth could reach out to Sothis to turn back the flow of time, she felt the familiar stench of chloroform vapor clog her nostrils and her throat and her brain, deadening every thought in her head before she could even think it.

* * *

Edelgard couldn’t help but think that by coming down here to ‘rescue’ her, Claude and Dimitri had played right into the Agarthans’ hands. Now not only was _one_ future leader of Fódlan missing, three inches tall, fuzzy, and in grave danger— _all_ of them were. The tremors this would send through the land could be seismic. Decapitate the three leading families in Fódlan—Hresvelg, Blaiddyd, and Riegan—throw each of its three countries into chaos, and swoop in whilst the political order falls apart… Thales and his pasty goons surely had to be absolutely _ecstatic_ right now.

If anything, the Leicester Alliance had it easiest of the three states. With its loose confederation of counties, another house could pick up the mantle of ruler—likely Goneril or Gloucester—with minimal disruption. The Holy Kingdom of Faerghus was already fragile, not yet fully recovered from the murder of its king and queen—the loss of the Blaiddyd bloodline’s only surviving heir would be the tipping point from what little semblance of order it kept to chaos. The Adrestian Empire would long for a strong leader to swoop in and reestablish order—and in Thales’ persona as Volkhard von Arundel, they would have it. Doubtless Thales already had someone in place who could do the same in Faerghus, transforming it into a puppet state. Between the two united powers, the Alliance would be crushed no matter how well it survived its succession crisis, and the Church of Seiros would be demolished.

None of those things were bad in essence—Edelgard wanted to see Fódlan unified under a single banner, the Church destroyed, and the existing social order completely and utterly upended—but what _really_ mattered was what would replace them.

The Agarthans would replace old tyranny with new tyranny. Life would not change for the Bernadettas of the world. In fact, things would be even worse for the weakest and most vulnerable.

 _Edelgard_ had to be the driving force. _Her_ vision, not theirs, had to win out. The future of all humanity depended on it.

She thought back to what Bernadetta had asked her. Would the Agarthans even _let_ her become Emperor anymore? Almost certainly not. That was why every one of them down here had to die. She had to at least cripple them before returning to Enbarr. They had to either be destroyed, or so diminished in power and personnel that she could wrap them around her finger.

“What do you think, Edelgard?” Claude asked her.

She snapped out of her reverie and found herself staring down at Matthias’ map, though Matthias was nowhere to be seen. She, Dimitri, and Claude were sitting around the map, studying it, poring over the layout of Abyss and what could be gleaned from it regarding the Agarthan forces’ positions.

“My apologies. Can you repeat the question?” she asked.

“I was telling Claude that the abandoned village we found here—Mousebrook—could make a good forward operating base,” Dimitri said. “Were you not listening?”

“There must be a lot on your mind for _you_ of all people to space out like that,” Claude said, resting his chin on his paw and giving her a grin that, in spite of his mousy features, was very Claude-like. “Not taking the whole mouse thing well, are we?”

No. Edelgard had to admit, she wasn’t. Although she _was_ doing better about it, mostly thanks to Bernadetta’s presence. Having someone soft and warm to cling to kept her calm, and having someone in dire need of her help kept her focused.

“That’s none of your concern,” she said.

“You sound cranky. Does somebody need brushies?” Claude chuckled. “Dimitri, does it sound to you like Edelgard needs brushies?”

Dimitri’s whiskers twitched. “Um… no?”

“I do not need brushies,” Edelgard said, though she couldn’t help but think about just how good a comb raking through her fur would feel right now. “If anything, _you_ two could use some decent grooming right now.” A comb was the least of what Claude and Dimitri needed—their fur was caked with filth and blood, bedraggled and haggard and in desperate need of a bath. They both looked like wild beasts.

“You know what, Edelgard? You’re right,” Claude said, nodding. “Since you’re so good at it, then, are you volunteering?”

“Excuse me? Volunteering for what?”

“To groom us, of course. Will you give us brushies?”

“No,” Edelgard said, already at her limit regarding Claude’s impish love of mischief.

“Oh, but look at how much we need it,” Claude pouted, looking at her with hangdog eyes. “Especially Dimitri. Don’t you want to give Dimitri brushies, Edelgard?”

Dimitri’s eye bulged. “C-Claude, _please—”_ he stammered, more flustered than Edelgard had ever seen him

“Dimitri, don’t you want brushies from Edelgard?”

“Please stop saying ‘brushies!’”

“She could pet your tummy or scratch behind your ears or—”

 _“Enough.”_ Edelgard slammed her fist on the floor. “If you must know, I was contemplating the future of our countries. Those who slither in the dark have effectively decapitated our ruling families; if we don’t make it out of here and return to our human forms soon, our bloodlines, and by extension the cornerstones of each of our countries’ political structure, will be exterminated. All of Fódlan could be consumed in the fires of chaos, and I fear what dread beast may emerge from its ashes.”

Claude’s air of forced levity vanished from the room. There was no more talk about grooming to be had, thankfully.

“You’re right,” Dimitri said. “Edelgard, at his age your father is unlikely to sire any new Crest-bearing heirs should you disappear; Claude, it is the same for your grandfather. I myself am the only living remnant of the Blaiddyd bloodline. If the three of us di—don’t make it out of here, a thousand-year lineage stretching back to the War of Heroes… the lineage of Blaiddyd, Riegan, and Hresvelg, and the blessings they received from the Goddess… ends.” He sounded more subdued than usual. “I… share your concern. If whoever is behind this has planned on this all along—”

“What was it you called them?” Claude asked Edelgard, leaning forward. “‘Those who slither?’”

Edelgard nodded. “The raiders that have been attacking this place, the Plague Rat… Hubert and I call them ‘those who slither in the dark.’”

“So you’ve met these people before, if they can be called that,” Claude noted, and Edelgard cursed how loose her tongue had gotten since she’d been transformed. It was as though such a tiny body simply couldn’t hold in so many secrets as she was accustomed. Or maybe she’d gotten used to confiding in Bernadetta.

“You’ve been fighting against them already, haven’t you?” Dimitri asked.

Edelgard took a deep breath. “Yes,” she said, thankful that what she’d said was true, if only half of the story (they didn’t need to hear the other half; in fact, hearing the other half would likely be counterproductive, to say the least). “This, I suppose, is their revenge.”

“A pretty unconventional revenge,” Claude commented. “This Plague Rat guy seems to want you dead at all costs, but his handlers act like there’s something more to it than that. I just wish I knew _what._ It feels like I’m eating one of those pastries with a hole through the center, and the mystery is the pastry, and all the clues we’re missing make up the hole in the center.”

“Claude, what are you talking about?” Dimitri asked.

“What, are you saying Mercedes hasn’t ever made those fried pastries for you? What does she call them? Dough-naughts? You’re in _her_ house, Dimitri! How are you not first in line for everything she bakes?”

“I’ve never had much of a taste for sweets.”

“Back to the point,” Edelgard said, tapping on the map. “Matthias mentioned Mousebrook yesterday. He said it was filled with consummate cannibals.”

“Well, when we stopped by there, it was filled with corpses,” Claude said. “Actually, though, Dimitri—don’t you remember that when the Plague Rat came through there, it seemed like he was _expecting_ to meet Myson there? I wonder if they’ve already established a minor presence there.”

Dimitri nodded. “That’s right. If so, we might run into the Plague Rat again…”

The idea of meeting that thing again filled Edelgard with dread, but she pushed that fear deep into the corner of her mind. “We also might run into slitherers we could capture and grill for information. If we secure the town, it’ll be that much easier to crush their stronghold.” She dragged her fingertip southward across the map to Mousehaven. “This, or so Matthias says, is their base of operations. Whatever passes for their leadership down here must be centered here. Since Mousebrook is near a canal, taking it will give us mastery over the waterways and give us an easy route southward.”

“There’s just one problem,” Dimitri said. “There are only about nine of us—us three lords, three of our classmates, and three of the Ashen Wolves. The mice here hardly have weapons and don’t know how to fight. Even if Matthias and Zeke join us, we’re still just shy of a dozen. How can we break through a stronghold like _that?”_

“We’ll burn that bridge when we come to it,” Claude assured him. “Now let’s talk inventory. There’ll be more supplies to stock up on in Mousebrook if we need them, so that shouldn’t be a concern. As for travel, we’ve got the wagon you came in, Edelgard, the two wagons the raiders left behind last night, and one tamed rat to pull each of them, so we’ll be able to get there quickly and without tiring ourselves out—”

A scream rang out from across the camp. Claude leaped to his feet, his ears twitching toward the source of the sound. “That came from Matthias’ tent!” he exclaimed, rushing away and leaving Edelgard and Dimitri to follow him.

They found Matthias in the room behind his tent, his lower half dangling from the hole in the ceiling, his tail just barely brushing against the floor.

 _“Matthias!”_ Bernadetta cried out, running into the tent with Marianne and Annette trailing behind her. “A-Are you okay? What’s wrong?”

Matthias fell from the ceiling, shivering as he picked himself up. His black eyes were wide, his face stricken with fear. “They… they took it… I can’t believe it… they took it…” he gasped, his chest heaving.

“This must be what Myson was talking about,” Claude said.

Annette crouched down at his side and patted him on the shoulder. “What’s wrong? What did they take?”

“Did they steal your drawings, Matthias?” Bernadetta asked. “I-I know how you feel, Matthias, i-if anyone stole any of _my_ drawings, I’d—I think I’d die of shame!”

“They took…” Matthias gulped down a lungful of air and just as quickly expelled it, his breath ragged. He glanced up at Edelgard, then glanced just as quickly back down at the floor, as though ashamed to meet her gaze. “Something… something important, something _very_ important, something I—it was really, really _really_ important, and—and now it’s—”

“What is it?” Dimitri hissed. “A weapon?”

 _“Hey! Paws off my brother, you damn fake mice!”_ Zeke bellowed, barging into the tent and all but shoving Annette aside so he could kneel at his brother’s side in her stead. “Mattie, what’s wrong? You okay? You hurt?”

“I-I’m fine, I’m fine,” Matthias insisted, shaking his head. Edelgard had never seen him so affected. He’d even been cavalier about the deaths of his own friends, but whatever had been stolen from him had left him rattled. “It’s just that—they, uh… took… took something from my upstairs, a-and it’s _really…”_

“You n’ your upstairs,” Zeke scoffed. Evidently, he wasn’t allowed up there, because he seemed to have just as much of a clue as everyone else regarding whatever had been squirreled away up there. “Well, what were ya hidin’ in there that’s so important? A weapon or something?”

Matthias sat straight up as though someone had shoved a ramrod up his spine. “A weapon! Y-Yeah, I-I was keeping a w-weapon up there! A really powerful one…” he moaned.

“Well, I’d have liked to have known that _yesterday…”_ Zeke muttered.

Matthias shook his head so vigorously that all his fur stood on end. “No, no, we, uh… we can’t use it. But if _they_ get their paws on it…”

A weapon that none of the mice here could use, but someone on the Agarthans’ side might be able to… Edelgard wondered, could Matthias have been talking about a mouse-sized Hero’s Relic, capable of being used only by one with the proper Crest? And if there was one thing the Agarthans knew—she was living proof of it—it was Crests.

“Then we must retrieve it,” Dimitri said, fist clenching around the shaft of his spear tightly enough to splinter the wood. “We’ll have to set out for Mousebrook immediately to gather intelligence.”

Edelgard looked down at Matthias. He still wouldn’t look at her.

Her thoughts turned to her teacher, to Byleth’s mastery of the Sword of the Creator, to the segmented arc of the relic’s whiplike blade cutting deftly through the air like a tongue of flames and cleaving in half everything it met like a knife through soft butter. She recalled that, and the blazing blade of Thunder Catherine’s Thunderbrand, and the Lance of Ruin that had transformed Miklan Gautier into a monstrous beast, and she imagined how terrible it would be for the Plague Rat to command such power.

* * *

The thing Lysithea hated most about being a mouse was the helplessness. Then again, she hated that about being human, too. Being a mouse just meant _more_ of it, meant having to depend on humans to carry her and shout to make herself heard and be at the mercy of everything bigger than her (which was almost everything), and on top of that, adding insult to injury, she had people (or rather, just Hilda) insisting on carrying her around and cooing about how cute she was and petting her and marveling at how silky her fur was and laughing about how tiny and adorable she was.

For a while, Lysithea had hated most of all when people treated her like a child, but once she’d been turned into a mouse by that wicked Tomas, she had discovered the one thing she hated even more than that, and that was when people treated her like a _pet._

And now, as she struggled back to consciousness, she realized the one thing she hated more than being treated like a pet was being treated like _food._

Because when she woke up, she found herself hogtied to a spit and hanging over a pit filled with gray ashes and a pile of wood that somebody was lighting on fire.

Panicked, she wriggled and writhed, trying to squirm out of the ropes tying her wrists and ankles to the spit to no avail. Beneath her, flames slowly licked at the pile of twigs and dried driftwood, acrid smoke stinging her eyes and nostrils.

Above all else, Lysithea hated _forced_ helplessness. To be helpless on her own merits (or lack thereof) was frustrating, but not torturous, as she only had herself to blame for it. But to be thrust into a situation in which she could do nothing by somebody else—it called to mind a past she couldn’t force herself to forget as much as she wanted to, a past filled with knives and ropes and shackles, with the aghast eyes of helpless parents as they stood aside and watched their daughter’s blood pour onto the floor, with the wide and pleading eyes of older brothers and sisters begging her to save them when she was just as trapped and just as powerless as them—

“Now, now, don’t struggle,” Landry said, pushing his glasses up his snout as he leered ghoulishly down at her. “You’ll make yourself tough and stringy.” The lenses of his glasses caught the light and shined, turning into opaque disks for an instant; for that instant, all Lysithea could see was the beaked facemask every single one of the mages who had experimented on her had worn.

She kept struggling. The rope chafed against her wrists and ankles as an uncomfortable warmth prickled the fur on her belly.

Trying not to panic, she looked around to see if there was anything she could do. Ramshackle huts pieced together from scrap wood and cloth circled a clearing filled with several scorched patches of bare stone; atop each blackened splotch was a pile of wood and ash and another roasting spit. Two of the spits were occupied: one by Caspar, who was struggling and squirming even more than Lysithea as fire lapped at his belly, and one by Linhardt, who seemed oddly calm.

She panicked. There was nothing she could do.

 _“Let them go! Let_ us _go! Take me instead!”_ Alois’ booming voice rang out. He, along with Catherine and Byleth, were sitting in a wooden cage, their arms tied behind their backs and their ankles bound together. Byleth’s Sword of the Creator lay on the floor just out of their reach. _“I can feed you for a week!”_

“I told you these mice weren’t trustworthy,” Catherine scolded him. “Though I suppose lecturing you _now_ won’t do any good.”

“You knights are hardly worth being the main course,” Ansley told them, pausing to wipe drool from her chin. “But these young ones are soft and lacking in muscle tone! That means their flesh will be tender and rich, like fine beef!”

“I hope you choke on me!” Caspar fumed, wriggling furiously and staring daggers at his captors. “If you don’t want muscular meat, what the hell am _I_ doing up here?”

“Oh, we’re not picky. A little gamy meat is alright from time to time,” Landry said. “Like venison.”

“Mice can have a little venison,” Ansley said, “as a treat.”

“Well, you’ll never get the tenderness you want out of Lysithea and me by _roasting_ us,” said Linhardt. “What you need to do is cook us for a long time over a low heat until our meat just falls right off the bone.”

 _“Liiiin!”_ Caspar cried out to him.

“Linhardt, this is hardly appropriate!” Catherine admonished him. “Professor, don’t you have something to say?”

Byleth simply stared ahead silently, her steely gray-blue gaze piercing and haunting, as though she was focusing very intently on something. Even as a mouse, she had an unnerving look in her eyes—empty and yet full, silent and yet oddly accusing, strangely mesmerizing. She said nothing, just kept staring and blinking at random intervals.

“Or I suppose you could braise us. Sear us over the fire or perhaps sauté us, then leave us to stew in a covered pot for, oh… six to eight hours. But _roast?”_ Linhardt said, arching his back as much as he could against the spit running across his spine to avoid the leaping flames growling restlessly beneath him.

 _“For the Goddess’ sake, stop telling them how to cook us, Linhardt!”_ Lysithea shouted at him. “I thought the worst you were was _lazy,_ but you’re just completely incompetent!”

“And that reminds me, why are we still alive? It won’t improve the flavor of the meat for us to be burned alive. If anything, you’ll ruin it. Is living flesh that important? Is this a ritual or something?” Linhardt asked.

“We _like_ it alive, though,” Landry said.

“And roasted,” Ansley said.

Lysithea despaired her lot in life. This was how she was going to die. She’d always known she was going to die, and she’d always known she was going to die _young,_ but she’d never imagined she was going to die _this_ young, and with so much left undone.

_Thanks a lot, Linhardt._

“The fear makes it taste better,” Landry added, speaking with a professor’s air of authority.

“That,” Linhardt said, “goes against everything I’ve read about hunting.” As the flames underneath him started to climb higher, he started huffing and puffing and trying to blow the flames out.

“Well, maybe the books you read were wrong,” Landry said. He put his arm over Ansley’s shoulders. “Oh, these three will feed us for _weeks,_ darling!”

Ansley scratched her chin. “Hmm. But I have another idea about the tough and stringy one, dear. What if we chop him up, marinate him, and make jerky? That will keep for months and months; we could keep ourselves fed well into old age.”

“Go ahead and try it,” Linhardt said. “I can personally vouch for his toughness; he’ll make _excellent_ jerky.”

 _“Lin, you asshole!”_ Caspar cried out, renewing his struggles. _“I thought we were_ friends!”

“And as you can see, I know a lot about food preparation,” Linhardt went on, “so perhaps I’d be of more use to you at your side than in your bellies. How about it, Ansley?”

“Well… I suppose we _could_ cook one of the knights instead,” Ansley wheedled, glancing at the cage holding the others. “The loud one has just as much meat as these two boys combined, I’d say.”

“Me and my big mouth,” Alois groaned. “Byleth, if you survive here, tell your father I died as I lived—a damned fool.”

“Very well,” Landry said, walking over to Caspar and drawing a knife from his tattered overcoat. “You take the other boy, dear. Now, you—little boy, this will hurt a lot, but only for a moment,” he told Caspar as he held the knife to his throat. “Before I kill you, any requests for how you want us to marinate and cure you? I have a very spicy dry rub that’s simply delicious…”

 _“Byleth, come on! There has to be something we can do!”_ Catherine shouted out, scooting to the edge of the cage and ramming her shoulder against the bars. _“Byleth! Don’t you give a damn about your students?! They’re going to die out there!”_

Byleth simply stared intently at Caspar and Linhardt, blinking rapidly as though she’d gotten dust caught in her eyes.

“What about me?” Lysithea shouted out to Ansley and Landry. “I’m twice as smart as Linhardt! I can be twice as useful!”

“Ah, but I can tell _your_ meat will be to die for,” Ansley said to her as she took a thimbleful of water and poured it over the fire underneath Linhardt. A plume of smoke blossomed in his face, making him cough and sputter. “You have the physique of someone who only eats sweets, and so your flesh will be _extra_ fatty and tender!”

“I am _not_ fat!” Lysithea protested. “I have a _very_ fast metabolism! I just look dumpy right now because I’m a mouse!”

“Oh, my nose says otherwise, dear,” Ansley said, “and when it comes to these matters, my nose is never—”

A bloodcurdling scream and a ragged war cry split through the air in unison, ripping the rest of the words from Ansley’s mouth.

Landry cried out and reeled backward, his bloodstained knife flying through the air; Caspar ripped himself free of his restraints, rolled through the firepit, and pounced on him, flames licking at his fur. With a swipe of Caspar’s claws, Landry’s glasses went flying through the air and a sheet of blood poured down his forehead as he stumbled farther backward.

 _“Darling!”_ Ansley cried out, but as soon as Linhardt’s paws were free, a magic seal traced itself in the air and a blast of white light hit her square in the stomach and knocked her off her feet. She went flying backwards, rolling head over heels as she hit the floor, her dress spilling out around her.

As soon as Landry had fallen, Caspar rolled around on the floor in a panic, patting frantically on the smoldering patches of his fur. “Ow, ow, ow, _fuck!”_ he cried out.

 _“Cas!”_ Linhardt rushed to his side. “I’ve got you,” he assured him, brushing the embers off his fur and channeling the warm light of a healing spell through his body.

“Goddess—fucking—ow, son of a motherfu—” Caspar spat, gritting his teeth as his burns healed. “Why do these fucking things hurt so much Goddess damn _worse_ when they’re healing?”

 _“Hey!”_ Catherine shouted at him. _“Language!”_

Lysithea watched helplessly as Landry picked himself up off the floor and reached for his knife. Linhardt and Caspar both had their backs to him; neither of them saw him stand over them, a waterfall of blood staining his fur and the front of his shirt, and with Caspar cursing up a storm, none of them could hear his heavy, labored breathing as he inched closer with a crazed gleam in his beady eyes.

 _“Linhardt!”_ she shouted, cursing herself, cursing her helplessness, cursing the bound hands that couldn’t conjure a spell no matter how badly she wanted to.

 _“Linhardt! Behind you!”_ Alois shouted.

Linhardt whirled around and shot a burst of flames from his paw, striking Landry in the face purely by accident; Landry’s fur alighted, and with an unholy screech, his entire head bloomed into a roiling blossom of fire. The stench of roasting flesh and fur filled the air, and at first Lysithea thought it was _his_ flesh and fur before noticing the searing, agonizing pain spreading through her own stomach.

She screamed.

As Landry teetered around the clearing, scrabbling at his fiery face, Linhardt broke away from Caspar and doused Lysithea’s firepit with a gust of wind. She coughed and gasped and squeezed her eyes shut, gritting her teeth, as a cloud of ash and cold embers stung her face.

Landry tripped and fell over Ansley, writhing on the floor; Ansley pulled herself up, took one look at him, and let out a scream as anguished as though _she_ had been burned. _“Darling!”_ she cried out. She ran into one of the huts. _“I will fetch some water, darling!”_

Lysithea fell ungracefully to the floor as Linhardt untied her, the impact causing the raw and burnt nerves on her stomach to scream bloody murder until he rolled her onto her back and laid healing hands on the wound. There was a blissful, numbing rush of warmth and the pain vanished; pristine skin and fur flowed across the angry black burn welts until none of them remained.

“That was brilliant, Linhardt!” Caspar said. “I knew we’d pull something off.” He kicked the writhing, smoldering body of Landry in the side. “By the way, Landry, your service stinks, and we’re gonna walk out without paying the bill!”

 _“Brilliant?”_ Lysithea hissed. “It was _so brilliant_ that it wrapped right around to being _stupid_ again! Linhardt, how could you have thought your dumb suggestions would lead to them freeing us?!”

“Well, considering they kept us alive in the first place,” Linhardt replied sheepishly as he went to the cage to free Byleth and the knights, “I _knew_ we weren’t exactly dealing with intellectual titans.”

“Considering we got captured in the first place,” Catherine said, glaring at Alois, “what does that say about _us?”_

“I know, I know,” Alois said, raising his paws. “This was all my fault. We never should have listened to these mice.”

“And don’t think you’re off the hook, either, Byleth,” Catherine said, standing over her with her paws on her hips as soon as Linhardt had untied her. “I can’t believe Lady Rhea holds you in such high esteem! Your students were in mortal peril and all you did was _stare!_ You didn’t do anything for them at all!”

Byleth looked up at her and raised an eyebrow. “Did I?”

“Actually, it was because of Professor Byleth that I knew to egg them on,” Linhardt said.

“And it was because of her that I knew if I relaxed my wrists, I’d be able to slip my paws out of those ropes,” Caspar said.

“I already had a plan as soon as I woke up and saw that they were still alive,” Byleth said, rubbing her wrists once Linhardt had untied them. “I blinked it to them using a special code my father taught me.”

Alois let out a riotous, booming laugh. “Ha! That’s Jeralt for you! I never doubted you for a second, Professor!”

“That’s… insane,” Catherine gasped. Lysithea had to admit, she shared her sentiment.

“How could you gamble so much on such a risky plan?” Lysithea asked Byleth, shocked and appalled. “The odds of it working must have been astronomical! How did you know it would work? How could you _possibly_ have had so much confidence in it?”

Byleth gave her a mysterious little smile. “Trial and error,” she said, the look on her face making it _very_ clear that she knew full well how little that answer explained and reveled in that knowledge.

 _“Darling, I’m coming!”_ Ansley shouted out, bursting out from the hut she’d ran into with a thimbleful of water under one arm and a hatchet stained black with crusty old blood in her free paw.

Elated that she was free and finally able to _do_ something, Lysithea flung out her arm, the power of the Crest of Gloucester throbbing in her veins, and conjured a wicked spear of black fire.

The lance of roiling miasma ripped through Ansley’s head and tore a hole through the hut. Blood spattered the hut’s wall around the hole the lance made; Ansley’s headless body slumped to its knees and fell to the stone floor, a fountain of blood spraying in the air from the ragged stump carved out between her shoulders. A bloody pool encircled it like a living shadow devouring the cannibal’s body for sustenance.

Lysithea let out a satisfied sigh as Linhardt clapped his paws over his snout and started to retch. It was good to not feel so helpless anymore.

“Good heavens, Lysithea!” Alois gasped. “You struck her down in cold blood!”

“She was going to _eat_ us,” she retorted.

A mouse rushed into the clearing from between two of the huts. Like the cannibals, he too wore fine though tattered clothes. “Landry, Ansley! What’s going on? When’s lunch gonna be ready; the rest of us are—” His eyes widened as he caught sight of the bloody and burned remains of the would-be chefs.

He started to scream; Byleth’s blade telescoped and whipped through the air, its razor tip embedding itself between the mouse’s eyes and ripping itself free, silencing him as abruptly as his scream had begun.

“I think it’s time to leave,” Byleth said, snapping the blade back.

* * *

Filling the center of Abyss was a surprisingly magnificent arena—a raised stone platform surrounded by a sandy pit and tiered risers stretching up to the domed ceiling. Gladiators must have done battle here long ago, Hubert mused, long before Garreg Mach had been built. This place must have been well over a thousand years old, and judging from the worn and chipped stone and the conspicuous holes in the walls where precious metals and gems must have been, neither the years nor the thieves who lived down here had been kind to it.

This place was a trap. He could tell right away, judging from the fact that nobody had stopped them from entering.

And so, of course, he made Ferdinand go in front of him.

“If Tomas is down here, I’m gonna punch him in the face,” Hilda said as she and the others hung back in the corridor, watching Ferdinand’s back as he stepped into the sandpit lining the arena. “I feel so gross and sweaty, and it’s all his fault!”

“The sweating is good for your skin,” Petra assured her.

“If sweating is good for you, then why does it feel bad?” Hilda retorted.

After a few minutes (though it felt like an hour, and all the while Hubert was imagining all manner of terrible things striking Ferdinand down), Ferdinand waved the rest of them in.

The first thing of interest to catch Hubert’s eye was what the mice had told him about, which was the massive magic seal drawn in what looked like blood. It stretched to each side of the raised platform in the center of the arena.

“What kind of a spell is _this_ for?” Dorothea asked. “I’ve never heard of a seal this big.”

Hubert scrutinized the writing that ran across every arc and line of the seal. It wasn’t a language he knew, of course. Something older than even the Agarthan tongue, something eldritch. Likely the language of the Immaculate One, the language of the so-called Goddess Sothis and her spawn. _“Polymorphus muridae,_ I’d assume.” He gestured to the cauldron sitting all by its lonesome in the center of the stage. “This is the production floor for that poison. The late Vejovis would supply the herbal components for the potion, and Solon would trigger the seal and imbue the potion with the spell.”

“Does it really take a circle this big?” Hilda asked, nudging the perimeter with her toe.

“Polymorphic spells are notoriously weak, rendering them rather impractical,” Hubert explained. “A circle of _this_ size, drawn in powerful blood, could probably transform two people at most. But bind it to a potent, heavily-concentrated concoction of exceptionally rare herbs, and you end up with a poison that can turn a man into a mouse with but four drops.”

Petra looked down at the seal. “What if we were destroying part of the circle? Would these Agarthans no longer be able to make the poison?”

“Until they redrew the circle, yes,” Hubert said.

“If we tip over that cauldron, it will spill onto the floor and wash away the blood,” Dedue suggested.

“And we know from what Vejovis told us,” Ferdinand said, “that those herbal ingredients are hard to come by. With him indisposed, the Agarthans no longer have a supply chain for the poison!”

“By all means, then,” Hubert said, beckoning him on, “tip over the cauldron.”

“With pleasure!” Ferdinand rushed past him, then came to a dead stop with one foot planted squarely inside the circle. “Wait. Hubert, there is no chance the seal could accidentally trigger once I am inside, is there?” he asked, his face paling.

“Earlier this morning, you were all but _begging_ me to let you turn yourself into a mouse.”

“Yes, but that was _different.”_

“No,” Hubert said, “there is no chance the seal could _accidentally_ trigger. But it could _intentionally_ trigger.”

That, evidently, was no great comfort, since Ferdinand didn’t look any less uneasy. Hubert had to admit that a part of him was looking forward to the prospect of the seal triggering, accidentally or intentionally, even though the latter of those two options would obviously present a problem for _everybody,_ not simply the pompous son of the Prime Minister.

“Then there we go,” Ferdinand said, stepping gingerly into the circle. “So far, so good…”

Hubert felt a rush of air behind him and saw his shadow throw itself across the arena, lit by a brilliant pillar of violet-white light behind him. Dorothea and Petra shouted out in surprise. Fire wreathed his hands, but before he could whirl around to incinerate the intruder, the end of a sorcerer’s staff drove itself into the small of his back and knocked him to the floor.

He rolled onto his back and found himself staring up into Solon’s black eyes. The Agarthan sorcerer licked his wormy, corpse-blue lips. _“Why not join your friend,”_ he hissed, _“Hubert von Vestra?”_ His staff crackled with dark magic as he lifted it and prepared to bring it down on one of the seal’s ley-lines.

Hubert flung out his hand, but no miasma or fire flowed forth, not even a spark.

But just before the end of the staff cracked against the floor, a dainty, well-manicured hand fell on Solon’s shoulder and wrenched him backward.

 _“Hey, Tomas!”_ Hilda snarled, decking him across the face with a shockingly mighty blow. Solon dropped to the floor as unceremoniously as a sack of flour and just as lacking in consciousness, his eyes rolling up into the back of his head. _“That’s for making me work!”_


	9. Matters of Faith and Trust

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hubert gets carried away interrogating Solon. Edelgard, Claude, and Dimitri join forces to set up a base of operations for their upcoming attack on Mousehaven. Shocking truths are revealed. Seteth does something unconscionable.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter's extra long because I kept thinking of more stuff to put in it and couldn't help myself! Also because we're getting close to the climax—and that means there are only a few chapters left in this fic!

Hubert wasn’t so pedestrian in his thoughts that he would correlate one’s morality to their physical appearance (after all, here he was with yellow eyes and no eyebrows to speak of), but there was something uniquely satisfying, almost _vindicating,_ about how utterly hideous Solon was.

The man who had spent the past eight years in the humble guise of Tomas, the nicest and least-suspicious monk in Garreg Mach, had the same pale, corpse-blue skin as any other one of those underground-dwelling fiends, and like many of his learned brethren, his face was marked with arcane sigils of a kind never seen in all of Fódlan—harsh, thick, angular lines and blocks, all sharp angles. A few wisps of fragile white hair clung to the back of his head, forming a ragged fringe running from the back of one ear to the other and barely managing to creep up his cranium, like the brittle and decaying strands that sometimes clung to the skulls of corpses long after the rest of their flesh had decayed. Bulging veins, fat and thick, looking for all the world like earthworms that had burrowed under his skin, ran up his forehead (which as his henchmen had said, was more like a six- or seven-head). One of his eyes was jaundiced, tinged with yellow; the other was jet-black with only a gleaming white hoop of an iris darting around the inky abyss to show the movements of his eye.

The pale skin was from living underground; everything else was from several lifetimes of immersion in the study and practice of dark magic. Hubert knew that if he himself could live for centuries, he wouldn’t look much better by the end.

Hubert and the others (Hilda had taken to calling him, her, and Dedue ‘the retainer squad,’ which he supposed was vindication of his theory that Hilda was Claude’s vassal, or at least a close equivalent) had dragged the unconscious Solon to his laboratory under the arena and tied him to a chair; when the fiend came to, he was trapped and helpless in his own inner sanctum, surrounded by the enemy.

A harsh white light, almost as bright and blinding as the sun, shone from a glass orb fixed in the ceiling; strange black and red ropes made of some odd smooth material snaked out from it and clung to the wall, running to a contraption in the corner of the cluttered room that let out a low, constant growl like a purring beast. Nestled in another corner was a strange picture frame filled with charts and graphs; the picture glowed with its own light, as though there were a lantern behind it, and the charts were drawing themselves as though by magic.

Agarthan technology. Hubert couldn’t confess to understand it, but he knew better than to let it unnerve him.

“Hello, Solon,” he said. He had hoped this particular fiend would have still been on Edelgard’s side—but events had shown otherwise. He was just as much a traitor to Edelgard as his apothecary counterpart.

“You are going to tell us what vile mechanisms fill this den of perversion,” Ferdinand immediately butted in, raising an arcane metal cylinder resembling some sort of wand. It produced a strange buzzing sound and a cobalt blue light, hard and gemlike, flared to life at its tip. “For starters—what in the Goddess’ name is _this?”_

“Screwdriver,” Solon said.

Ferdinand looked at it, befuddled.

“I took it from an incorrigible meddler who fancied himself a physician.”

“Look, Ferdie’s never seen a tool in his life,” Dorothea said, “except when he looks in a mirror, but I’m sure even _he_ knows that doctors don’t use screwdrivers. And _that_ is not a screwdriver.”

“Excuse me!”

“In case you’ve lost all sense of self-preservation,” Hubert cautioned the two of them, “don’t let the business end of any of this _creature’s_ tools touch your bare skin. Or your clothed skin, for that matter. In fact, try not to touch anything.”

In direct and immediate defiance of his ‘no-touching’ order, Petra prodded at a small carcass resting on another workbench. “Why are you having a dead rat here?”

“I had to pour some old wine into a new wineskin earlier this morning,” Solon said. “I still need to dissect it to determine why that one gave out so much more quickly than the others.”

“I have no time for riddles and cryptic statements, Solon,” Hubert said. “You are going to tell us what is going on here.”

“Oh, I’m sure you know what has happened to Lady Edelgard von Hresvelg, Hubert. I hear she makes for quite a fetching mouse.”

“Yes, I do. Where is she?”

“And the other lords,” Dedue added. “Prince Dimitri and Claude. You will tell us where they are.”

Solon looked up at him. _All_ the way up at him. He laughed. “Do you think I know the whereabouts of every little rodent scurrying around in this abyss?”

“I’m sure you know more than us,” Dorothea said, crossing her arms.

“Listen to me, Solon.” Hubert rested his hands over Solon’s bound wrists and leaned in until their noses nearly touched. “One way or another, we will find Lady Edelgard.”

“And—” Hilda interjected.

“And the others as well, time permitting. You can either assist us or die here in utter agony. I will do things to you so horrible and painful, so degrading, so humiliating, that you will have preferred that I drag you in front of Archbishop Rhea.”

Solon merely grinned, daring Hubert to make good on his promise.

“Whatever happens, know this—your plot to eliminate Lady Edelgard and appoint a new heir to the Adrestian throne dies today. At least you may save one life—your own.” Of course, though, Hubert had no intent to let him keep his miserable life after what he had done.

“A new heir? Why would we want to go through all the trouble of having the Emperor choose a new heir?” Solon asked, wrinkling his brow. “This entire operation has nothing to do with _eliminating_ Edelgard. Only with… changing her mind.”

Petra gasped. “You are going to be taking someone else’s brain and putting it in Edelgard’s head?”

“No, no, Petra,” Ferdinand said. “It is not _literal,_ but rather another Fódlanish turn of phrase: an idiom. You see, to change one’s mind means to convince them of the error of their ways—”

Solon chuckled. “No, the beast from Brigid has the right idea.”

“I see,” Hubert growled. As Solon had said, old wine in new wineskins. “Lady Edelgard’s body is an achievement you can’t so easily recreate, but you’ve grown tired of her rebellious mind. You can’t replace her the way you replaced Tomas, but…”

“Ingenious, isn’t it?” Solon said. “With our technology and sorcery, we have created a mind capable of moving from body to body like a parasite feeding off its host. Edelgard’s perfect body offers it a lifetime of nourishment and an incomparable pedigree.”

Hilda scoffed. “‘Perfect body?’ Sure, she’s cute, but she’s flat as a—”

“Hold your ignorant tongue, Goneril. Lady Edelgard is of incomparable beauty,” Hubert interrupted. “And besides, that is not what he means by ‘perfect.’” He seethed, reflecting on what these monsters had considered ‘perfect’ and what they had done to Edelgard’s body to make it fit their definition of the word.

“And besides, she’s… a mouse right now?” she continued, giving him a sidelong dirty look. “You can’t put a _mouse_ on the Adrestian throne! It’d be too small… and no one’s gonna want to be ruled by a mouse!”

“A trivial matter,” Solon scoffed. “Actually, it works in our favor. Our little mental parasite can only manage to take the bodies of small creatures… mice, rats, voles, squirrels, the like. When it takes Edelgard’s body, though…”

“You’ll be able to make her human again,” Dorothea finished. She let out a horrified gasp. “No, not her— _it…_ in her body!”

“And the bloodline most beloved of Seiros will become the instrument of the beast’s destruction! Through this,” Solon concluded, “the world is saved!”

 _“‘Saved?’_ From _what,_ you stark raving lunatic?” Ferdinand interjected.

“From this world’s masters,” Solon said, seething. “This world is ours. It _was_ ours. But the Fell Star and its children took it from us—and we will take it back from those beasts and burn this pathetic, stagnant rat’s-nest you call ‘civilization’ to the ground!”

“But,” Hubert reminded him, “you need the antidote, and that is where your plan falls apart. Because your cohort Vejovis was unable to procure the proper supplies.”

“It’s true he couldn’t procure the proper supplies,” Solon said, “but we, unlike you, are not without options.”

Of course, Hubert thought. If they only needed to transform one or two people, then a single polymorphic seal like the one traced around the arena would suffice. All the Agarthans who’d been turned into mice would just have to wait their turn… or languish down here forever. It seemed quite an effective means to carry out a coup, if that was one’s aim.

Dedue stepped forward. “Tomas. Solon. Whatever your name is. I already tire of hearing you speak. But thank you for explaining your plan to us. Now we may put a stop to it.”

Solon laughed. “Oh, please, Duscur ape! Do you honestly think I would explain to you my plan if there was any chance that you and your friends could stop it? I’ve already done it.”

Hubert’s reaction was visceral and explosive; he felt his fingernails stab crescents into his palms as she sought to quell the bile boiling in his heart. “You lie,” he snarled. “You Agarthan snakes are masters of deceit. Everything you’ve let slip from that forked tongue of your could just as easily have been as fantastical as a children’s fable.”

Ferdinand nodded in agreement. “Hubert is correct. You and your ilk hardly have a penchant for telling the truth, _Tomas.”_

“Yes, yes, that is a good point you two noble whelps raise.” Solon smiled. “But when, or rather, _if,_ you retrieve your precious Lady Edelgard, how will you know?”

Hubert bit back a stream of curses. “I have served as her vassal since I was eight years old. No one knows her as I do.”

“For a gibbering ape, your confidence is almost admirable,” Solon said, chuckling.

“My confidence in Lady Edelgard is unshakable. Mark my words, Solon, with or without her, your reckoning begins today. Lady Edelgard has never forgiven you for what you did in Enbarr, in Duscur, and whatever happens to her, I will see to it that she delivers her judgment.”

“Oh, _you_ do not forgive us? Do you think _we_ will forgive you for this, Hubert? Even if you find your precious Lady Edelgard down here, her dreams die today.”

“I am sure there are agents on the other side of your little schism who still support Lady Edelgard—”

“There _is_ no schism. Vejovis and Kronya made that story up to give you hope.” Solon laughed. “And I see it now fading from your eyes…”

“No,” Hubert said, though shaken by the thought that he’d been so easily misled. “It is a relief to know that Lady Edelgard and I will no longer have to simper and beg at your feet—that we can now kill you all on sight.”

“Oh, bold, bold words, Hubert,” Solon sneered. “Then kill me now.” He waited, expectantly. Hubert stayed his hand; he couldn’t kill this man until he’d extracted the information he needed from him.

“Tell me where Edelgard is.”

“No.”

“Petra, you carry a hunting knife, correct?”

Petra nodded.

“I need to borrow it.”

Solon kept looking up at him from the chair he was tied to. Half defiant, half… amused? A wry smile tugged against one wormy corner of his mouth. Hubert would wipe that smile off his face.

Petra handed him the knife. He took the end of one of Solon’s fingers—the index finger—tugged on it, lifted it up, placed the knife blade side up right under the first knuckle, and tugged the finger downward, exerting a gentle downward pressure on the handle of the knife as well. “Tell me where she is.”

Solon chuckled.

Dedue stepped forward. “Hubert,” he said, “this will not help.”

“Leave,” Hubert told him. He turned to the others. “All of you, leave.”

Ferdinand crossed his arms. “Hubert, the last time we left you alone with one of these fiends, you reduced him to a charcoal smear.”

“Yes, that’s _why_ I had you leave, dolt. You were watching me from the top of the staircase back there, I suppose?”

“I had Caspar and Linhardt keep an eye on you. At that point, we had to know if you were… _plotting_ with him. The point I am making,” Ferdinand said, “is that you are quite obviously going to kill this ‘Solon’ if we leave you two alone. I propose we bring him to the Archbishop and have the Knights of Seiros deal with him. They are the proper authorities. They can question him more effectively than you can.”

Hubert pressed down on the handle of the knife.

Solon let out a scream as the blade of the knife ripped through skin, muscle, tendon alike, parting the gap between two fingerbones. His bloodied index finger fell to the floor, leaving an oozing stump attached to his hand.

 _“Oh my Goddess!”_ Hilda squeaked, clapping both hands over her mouth. “Hubert, that’s _disgusting!”_

“You may leave if you see fit,” Hubert told her. He wiped the blood off the knife on his cloak and waited for the screaming to end.

“Is _this_ your oh-so-vaunted torture?” Solon wheezed, cackling breathily. “Your precious Edelgard endured worse when she was eleven years old. I know. I was there.”

Hubert shook his head and moved onto the next finger. “Where is Edelgard, Solon?”

“Taking one finger did not make him talk,” Dedue observed, clearly disgusted. “Taking another will not make a difference.”

“I didn’t take you for an expert on torture,” Hubert told him.

“Yeah, that’s it,” Hilda said, throwing up her hands and heading for the door. “I’m out.” She grabbed the knob and tried to turn it. It didn’t. “What the—Which of you idiots locked the door on the way in?”

 _“I_ would be that idiot,” Solon said, leering at her. “There is a mechanism within the doorknob that instantly locks it should my pulse rise too quickly.” He switched his voice to Tomas’. “Oh, but dear, perhaps if you bring me some chamomile tea, you could calm me down and get that door open. I believe I have a kettle on one of my workbenches.”

“Do not worry, Hilda,” Hubert said, pressing Solon’s middle finger against the blade of Petra’s knife. When he passed out from the pain, his pulse would slow dramatically and the door would open. “I will see to it he opens the door for you.”

Instead, Solon smiled. “You do not understand. You _still_ do not understand.”

“I won’t stop with one finger. I will take the rest of your fingers, all of them, and then your toes, all of them, and then lop off your hands at the wrists, then your feet at the ankles, then your legs at the knees and your arms at the elbows. Then I will cut out your tongue, slice off your nose, pluck out your eyes, scalp you, and castrate you. Your ears… I will leave your ears,” Hubert hissed, “so that you may hear your own moans of agony and the wailing cries of _‘My goddess, what in Sothis’ name is that_ thing?’ from every mother who passes you by with child in tow as you lie on the streets of Enbarr like so much horses’ excrement. You are at my mercy, and I assure you, I have precious little to spare for the likes of you. Tell me. _Where is Edelgard?”_

“For the love of the Goddess, Hubert!” Ferdinand cried out, grabbing him roughly by the shoulder. “How is _this_ helping?”

“You have no right to lambast me for my methods!” Hubert snapped at him, shoving him aside. “You do not even care about Lady Edelgard’s fate at all, do you? Day in, day out, all I have heard from you is, ‘I do hope poor Bernadetta is safe and well!’”

Ferdinand drew back, a wounded look on his face. “Hubert, I have always held Lady Edelgard in the highest esteem. If I worry about Bernadetta, it is because I trust Lady Edelgard to take care of herself! But Bernadetta is so fragile, so weak, so fearful…”

“Oh, don’t mind Hubert’s little temper tantrum,” Solon said to Ferdinand, unfazed. “Don’t be too harsh on him; he is only reliving the worst day of his life. Were you this angry and unbridled, Hubert, the day Edelgard was taken?” He looked to the others. “He was ten years old when the nobles revolted against the Emperor and Edelgard was delivered into our hands, you see. He ran away from his father’s estate to find her; it took three days for his father’s soldiers to catch up with him and subdue him.”

Dorothea let out a disgustingly pitying gasp.

“It’s no wonder you’re acting out,” Solon said to Hubert. “Trauma has a way of arresting you primitive apes’ emotional maturity, after all. Deep down, beneath all the sinister affectation, you are still nothing more than a helpless child.”

Hubert could tell his rhetoric had had no effect on Solon. “To the pain it is, then,” he said, and he took the next finger.

Solon’s subsequent howl of anguish became a manic laugh. _“Computer, unseal terrarium number six!”_ he howled.

There was a sound like rushing wind from the depths of the cluttered laboratory and a buzzing in the air; Hubert felt something skitter across the side of his neck.

A swarm of insects—dozens of them, perhaps hundreds—filled the air in the room’s close quarters, iridescent and gleaming in the light, their abdomens fat and swollen with poison.

Hubert slapped the side of his neck and was rewarded with a satisfying crunch and a wet splatter against his skin; he pulled his hand away and found it stained black with ichor. “Solon, you snake!”

Solon simply smiled. The insects seemed to completely avoid him while shouts and cries erupted from the others. A bolt of lightning from Dorothea sailed through the air, vaporizing a chunk of the black cloud and leaving a scorch on the ceiling, but it was like trying to catch smoke in a fishing net—

“Oh, would that I were a snake,” he purred, grinning, “so I could swallow you whole, you little rat, tail and all!”

Hubert prepared a miasma spell, violet bolts of lightning leaping from finger to finger as a black mist rose from his palm. As much as he wanted to use it to hollow out Solon’s insides right now, he had to wait until after this horrendous swarm had been dealt with.

A black cloud burst against the ceiling, scattering harmlessly against the stone as the light flickered and the machinery cluttering the laboratory coughed; the cloud of bugs broke apart, a few scorch marks on the ceiling marking tiny graves for those that had been incinerated. Hubert hit the floor hard enough to knock the air from his lungs.

Gurgling helplessly, Ferdinand rolled off of his back and gripped his shoulder desperately, frothy white foam dribbling down his chin as his body reshaped itself from the inside out. Hubert kicked him away. If the pompous oaf was going to turn into a mouse here, then at least he ought to have the decency to do so _away_ from him!

As soon as Hubert hauled himself back on his feet, though, his legs gave out, crumpling underneath him like empty sacks. A flower of pain blossomed in every joint down to the knuckles, blooming in a row down his spine, and as his bones melted within his flesh and a bristling wave of pins and needles marched up his skin, he could do nothing but look up at Solon, who was no longer sitting helplessly on a chair but lounging haughtily on a towering throne.

His vision clouded; a gray mist crept in from the sides; the pain reached a howling crescendo, burning like lit matches beneath his skin. Solon leered down at him, looming larger and larger with each passing second. He struggled to pull himself forward, struggled to clear his mind long enough to cast one more spell. Every inch felt longer than the last; with every passing second, his uniform hung looser and looser on his dwindling frame as though he were a child playing dress-up with his father’s clothes.

He felt Solon’s boot press against his forehead, the pale giant cackling with sadistic delight. With the last of his strength, he plucked a fallen insect off the ground—it skittered and squirmed in his hand, but the thing’s wings had been burned away—crawled closer, yanked on the hem of Solon’s robes, and drove the insect’s sharp, needle-like proboscis into the first patch of bare skin he could see, squeezing out whatever poison was left in its chitinous belly.

Solon’s confident sneer melted away like a snowball on a hot summer’s day, abject fear widening his eyes.

 _“No matter what,”_ Hubert choked out, hissing through aching teeth, _“Lady Edelgard shall have her revenge!”_

As he blacked out, his last thought was that in spite of the pain he still considered it an honor, in a perverse way, to meet the same fate as her highness. At least this way, when the two of them met again, he would not tower over her.

* * *

The road to Mousebrook was long, but with three wagons holding three mice apiece (and Matthias), it was hardly arduous—save for the musky stench of the rats which pulled them, which Edelgard was certain she would never become accustomed to. It was an odor that slipped past all of her rational mind’s defenses, not only due to her longstanding phobia but simply due to the nature of being a mouse. And when combined with the stench of sewage, it formed an altogether revolting blend.

Edelgard sat in the wagon with a part of her cloak pressed to her nose to block out the stench. It may have been filthy and bloodstained, and by heaven did those bloodstains _reek,_ and it may have picked up some scent from her fur, but beneath all that she could still smell traces of humanity. _Her_ humanity. It wasn’t a smell she could quite put into words, but she could tell from its odd familiarity that it was the scent of her own human body that clung to her clothes—the soap she washed her skin with, the lavender and rosemary oils she used in her hair, her sweat after a long day of training—and that melange somehow kept her at ease.

She cast an idle glance at Bernadetta, who shared this particular wagon with her, Matthias, and Claude (as it turned out, he had a bit of a knack for managing the rats’ reins and was intent on asking Matthias all manner of questions). Did that black cloak she had ripped from her own uniform carry her scent as well?

Edelgard wondered why she was asking that question at all. What did it matter what Bernadetta smelled like?

“So, this weapon,” Claude asked Matthias from his seat at the front of the wagon, “can you describe it to me?”

“Uh… w-weapon? Y-yeah, it was, um… spiky,” Matthias said, staring firmly off the side of the wagon. He didn’t seem very sure of his answer. “Spiky, and, um, sort of a… sword.”

“Sort of a sword.”

“Yeah, but also no. It had a hilt. And a blade. But that’s kinda where the similarities, uh, end.”

Something was odd about Matthias’ answers. He was never this laconic. Evasive, yes, whenever he was talking about something he found embarrassing, but never so taciturn unless his brother was intimidating him.

“If you had a powerful weapon,” Edelgard asked, “why wasn’t it given to me? I thought I was your prophesied savior.”

“Well, see, here’s the thing,” Matthias said.

A pregnant pause filled the air. “Yes?” Claude asked, expecting him to keep going.

“It kind of, uh, kills you if you wield it.” Matthias stuck out his tongue and blew a raspberry. “Yup. Stone dead. Just like that. Alive one moment, skeleton the next. Just, poof, there goes all your skin and fur and all the juicy bits inside. So I didn’t want to, um, accidentally… you know. Kill you.”

“It kills you if you wield it,” Claude repeated. “So what’s the big deal if it goes missing? Let ‘em kill themselves trying to use it. We won’t even have to fight them then! Sounds like my kind of battle, really.”

“Ever the coward,” Edelgard shot at him. “I think Matthias’ concern is that somebody worthy among them _will_ find it. Doesn’t what he’s describing sound like a Hero’s Relic?”

“Huh. It kinda does. Mattie, what’s this sort-of-sword made of?”

“Uh… dunno?”

“Does it have any sort of… ornaments?”

Matthias thought for a moment. “Uh… hmm… Y’know, I haven’t _looked_ at the sword in a long time, so…”

“So it could’ve been stolen a really long time ago?”

“No, no, I-I mean, I kept it wrapped up in a sheet, and the sheet was what vanished. I think it had a, uh… um… an orb?” He looked at Edelgard expectantly. “Yeah. There was an orb on it.”

“What color?”

“Dunno.”

“Right. Colorblind.” Claude sighed. “Did you ever get the sense that it was… _alive?”_

“What, like did it talk to me? Nah. Not really sure what a sword would have to say, anyway. I mean, _this_ sword that belonged to the great Saint Martin the Warrior showed me a vision once while I was polishing it, but that’s not really the same thing…”

“Did it ever seem to move or pulsate?”

“Pulsate? Oh, yeah, it pulsates like there’s no tomorrow.” Matthias shrugged. “Always just constantly with the pulsating. Day in, day out, it pulsates. I’ve never seen something pulsate so much.”

“Uh-huh.” Claude looked to Edelgard suspiciously. “If these guys _do_ have a Hero’s Relic, this could get… _bad._ But who’d go through the trouble of making a mouse-sized Relic?”

“We can ask them once we defeat them,” Edelgard said. “Even if they _do_ have one, they only have _one.”_

As the caravan continued its leisurely journey, Edelgard looked to Bernadetta. She cowered in the corner, curled up and wrapped in her cloak, cowed by Claude’s presence. For an introvert like her, someone as outgoing as him was probably pure poison. And after her experience with Yuri, there was no doubt that Bernadetta could very keenly notice the way his smile never reached his eyes.

Edelgard inched closer to her and silently offered a shoulder to her. She couldn’t be much more overt than that, lest she give Claude something to needle her about in the frustrating way he needled people; she worried, though, that subtler displays of affection might be lost in the noise of Bernadetta’s overwhelming anxiety.

 _Affection._ She couldn’t deny that she felt affection toward Bernadetta. For too long down here, Bernadetta had been all she’d had, and so Edelgard felt she owed her that, at least. But it went beyond a mere transactional relationship now. She was actually _enjoying_ being with her.

“So, who’s your friend, Princess?” Claude asked, giving Bernadetta a false grin.

“This is Bernadetta,” Edelgard said, since Bernadetta was obviously not going to respond. “She’s one of my classmates.”

“Huh… Oh, yeah! I’ve seen you shooting off arrows in the training hall!”

Bernadetta curled up tighter, as though horribly embarrassed to have been seen exercising.

“I had no idea you were in the Black Eagles.” Claude stroked his whiskers. “In fact, I wasn’t sure you were a student at all. I never see you at seminars or in the dining hall or…”

Bernadetta shook her head.

“She’s a bit of a recluse,” Edelgard offered. “She makes it a point to avoid people.”

“What a partner to have down here, huh?” Claude chuckled. “We’ve got a recluse of our own in the Golden Deer, too.” He pointed to Dimitri’s wagon, which carried the prince, Annette, and a blue-haired mouse whom Edelgard had never seen before, either as a mouse or as a human. She sat up front and drove the wagon, whispering occasionally to the rat pulling it along. “Her name’s Marianne. Avoids people. Keeps mumbling about a cursed bloodline. Occasionally mistaken for a ghost. Talks to animals.”

Edelgard thought about Crests. In a way, all descendants of the Ten Elites were of cursed bloodlines—cursed by these so-called ‘blessings’ from the Goddess.

Claude leaned over. _“Hey, Dimitri! Does your house have a recluse, too?”_ he called out to Dimitri’s wagon. _“Like, someone who never talks and avoids people?”_

Dimitri ignored him. Annette called back, _“Uh… no, but we have a Felix!”_

“Huh. Marianne, Bernadetta, and Felix. The loners of Garreg Mach. We should set something up between the three of them, get ‘em in a room together, see what happens.”

Bernadetta paled, her eyes bulging, and vigorously shook her head. Edelgard wondered if she’d run into Felix before. She herself had passed by him a handful of times. He was… intense, to say the least. Exactly the kind of person a paranoid wallflower with a raging persecution complex would be terrified around. Then again, if Bernadetta could warm up to _her,_ anything was possible.

“Well, your recluse seems to have warmed up to you, at least,” Claude said with a sly, far-from-innocuous wink.

“Of course. I can’t have my classmates afraid of me,” Edelgard said. “Just as long as yours and Dimitri’s _are.”_

He laughed off her remark. “I’m learning so much about you down here, Princess. To think the whole ice queen thing was just an act! So you’re sweet as royal icing to all your classmates behind closed doors?”

“Don’t get the wrong idea.”

“You’re making it sound like I should talk to Teach about transferring into the Black Eagles. What about you, Dimitri? Wanna transfer into Edelgard’s class?”

Edelgard wondered why Claude kept singling out Dimitri. She supposed the prince was so polite and stiff that he simply made himself the easiest target for Claude’s ribbing, despite the tales of his fearsome strength.

The three wagons reached the edge of town, where the stench of sewage was omnipresent. Edelgard supposed this was what passed for riverfront property in Abyss. Claude tugged on the reins of her rat and pulled the wagon to a halt; the other drivers did the same.

Dimitri picked up his spear from the back and leaped down to the floor. “This is it.”

“With any luck, all we’ll find here are corpses,” Annette said, joining him and helping Marianne down.

Claude collected his bow and joined them; Edelgard, Bernadetta, and Matthias followed him out. “Speak for yourself. I’m hoping we run into a few slitherers to capture and question. Just as long as the Plague Rat isn’t slumming it up here today.”

At the sound of that name, Dimitri scratched worryingly at his makeshift eyepatch. “I hope he _is_ here; we can finish him off. That vermin needs to pay for what he’s done.”

“Your, uh, _optimism_ concerns me, Didi,” Hapi told him. “Ya _that_ eager to lose the other eye?”

Edelgard looked across the gate and into the little town of Mousebrook. It was surreal to see such familiar buildings writ in miniature across the stone floor, stretching from the rushing canal all the way to the far wall. There was enough space for several dozen, perhaps a hundred or more mice to live with all the comforts of human civilization. A clock tower, its massive hands still ticking, rose from town square. Edelgard felt more relieved than she could have imagined to see the hands inching away from noon; she’d been down here for so long with only her own body’s rhythms to judge the passage of time that to have some concrete measure of it felt like drinking hot tea at the end of a cold day.

“Civilization,” she breathed as she, Claude, and Dimitri led the others through the gates and Constance dragged her drowsy, half-asleep pet bat out of her wagon. Civilization it was, albeit a dead one—it wasn’t long until the first of many ripped-apart bodies came into view. She had to remind herself that the mice here had eaten each other. Was the carnage all from that? How much of it had been that, and how much had been the Plague Rat’s doing?

More impressed than her by the sights of civilization was Matthias. He wandered through the town of Mousebrook as giddy as a child in a sweet-shop, rushing ahead of all the others to gawp at the delights it had to offer.

“Oh, goodness! So this is a town, huh?” he squealed, unable to contain his excitement. “You know, the last time I was here, I barely remember any of it, I was so terrified! All these buildings! These tiny buildings! I mean, normal-sized for _us_ but not compared to all those big human huts we saw in Chrysalis Row and Burrow Street! Windows made of glass! _Roofs! Shingles!”_ He did an ecstatic pirouette, whirling around to take in the town from every angle. “This is amazing! It’s so much more amazing than I expected!”

“We aren’t here for sightseeing,” Edelgard reminded him, hoping to sober him up (since all of the corpses lying everywhere didn’t seem to do anything to his spirits). “We’re here for information-gathering first and foremost, and fighting if need be. Stay close to us.”

Matthias stopped twirling. “R-Right. But sightseeing is sort of information-gathering, isn’t it?”

“He’s got a point,” Annette said.

“All the same,” Edelgard said, “try to keep a lid on your enthusiasm, Matthias.”

“Yes, ma’am!” Matthias saluted. “What’s that _big_ one over there with the round thing, though?” he asked, pointing to the clock tower.

“That’s a clock tower,” Dimitri told him.

“What’s a clock tower?”

“It’s a tower with a giant clock in it.”

“Ah, I see. What’s a clock?”

While Matthias kept asking questions, the party passed by another throng of gore-spattered rodents. A disemboweled mouse wasn’t the most unnerving thing in the world—in fact, in a monastery with so many cats, it was a common enough sight—but the fact that these were about the equivalent size as a human corpse and were wearing clothes made it particularly morbid.

“Should we, uh… _do_ something about all these dead bodies?” Annette asked.

“Yeah, let’s clean this place up!” Balthus chimed in. “Matthias, your camp could live here!”

“We could, but… Abyss is a dangerous place. The whole monastery, really. Too many cats, too many humans. We need somewhere outside to live.” Matthias clapped his paws, his eyes brightening. “Still, I guess this could be a good stopgap, this and Mousehaven! Once we take those towns back, it’ll be a lot easier to relocate! You’re the best, Balthus; I’m so glad we’re friends now!”

“Let’s focus on rooting out whatever vermin remain here first before we start making those kinds of plans,” Dimitri said.

“Aw, let the little guy dream,” Balthus said to him. “Won’t hurt.”

“Even if we don’t find any slitherers hanging around, surely they’ve got a base of operations they’ve left behind in this city,” Claude said. “Who knows what we can find there?”

“So, we’ve got to check inside all these buildings?” Matthias said, his ears and whiskers perking up. His tail twitched eagerly under his robes and before a single word could be gotten in edgewise by anyone else, he headed for the largest building lining the street—which happened to be, next to the clock tower, the tallest building in town—and vanished into the front door.

“Wait, don’t—” Edelgard called out after him. This was a side of him she hadn’t seen before; he and Caspar would get along famously.

“Oh, look how eager he is!” Constance chirped. “He’s so sweet, I could just eat him up! Pardon the expression.”

“If anyone tries to kill you in there, scream and we’ll come get you!” Hapi called out.

“I’m goin’ after him!” Balthus said, and before anyone could stop him (as though anybody _could_ break that behemoth’s stride), he rushed in after Matthias.

The rest of the party approached with much more caution. Claude read the faded lettering on the sign that hung over the front door. “‘Donner Family Inn,’” he puzzled out. “‘Nothing Is Sweeter Than Our Guests—We Mean It.’ Aww, that’d be adorable if everyone here wasn’t a cannibal.”

“Oh, how joyous! An inn!” Constance cried out. “At last, a place where we can rest and relax!”

“We aren’t here to rest and relax,” Dimitri said to her. “We’re here to—”

“Well, when we’re done information-gathering, we can rest and relax,” Claude said. “We’ll need some place to spend the night. If we’re going to launch an attack on those who slither in the dark, it wouldn’t do us much good to do it sleep-deprived… or hungry.”

“What kind of food, exactly, are you expecting to find in a town where every single inhabitant was a consummate cannibal?” Edelgard pointed out.

“They can’t have _just_ eaten people. If they’d _only_ eaten people, they’d have run out of people,” Hapi said.

“Where do you think they got their food?” Annette asked. “Was there some sort of daily lottery to decide which of their neighbors they’d eat?”

“That’s horrible,” Bernadetta moaned, anxiously kneading her paws. “If I lived here, I’d never leave my house! I mean, I already never leave my room, but at least _here_ I’d have a good excuse…”

“Judging from the size of this inn, I’d say this place was a tourist trap,” Claude said. “Literally. Make the town look nice, turn it into a little oasis, invite people to stay at the inn… probably drug your guests and drag them into some dungeon in the basement to hold them until you’re ready to eat them…”

Annette blanched as Claude spun his theories, the skin under her fur paling. Even Edelgard felt a little queasy.

Balthus burst out of the front door of the inn, Matthias trailing behind him with a lit match in one paw. “Guys! Guys! You won’t believe what we found!” he gasped, panting for breath.

“What?” Dimitri gasped. “Is it them? Is this their base?”

“Better than any of that crap.” Balthus shook his head, grinning. “This place has got _baths!”_

“Never known _that_ to excite you, B,” said Hapi, a wry half-smile brightening her normally dull face.

“Yeah, well, it’s not often we swim through sewage,” he retorted.

Constance sniffed the air and cringed. “Yes, with the exception of myself, Her Highness Princess Edelgard, and little Bernadetta here, you are _all_ sorely in need of baths. I am amazed I put up with your unholy stenches for so long without a word of complaint. You all owe me a debt of gratitude.”

“Wait, _I_ didn’t swim through sewage,” Matthias said.

“You _do,_ however, have the stench of abject poverty about you.” Constance let out a haughty laugh. “But never fear! The baths I shall draw shall make you all the most fragrant mice in all Fódlan!”

“You’re gonna draw baths for all of us?” Hapi said, a rare happy grin crossing her face. “Sounds like a _lot_ of work, Coco. You know… _servant’s_ work.”

“Ah. Well,” Constance replied, flustered, “I—I did not mean I would _personally_ draw your baths for you, merely that _you_ would draw your own baths, and I would cast a spell on the water to make it as aromatic as the finest perfume…”

“If there’s nothing here, let’s move on,” Dimitri said, tapping one foot anxiously on the ground.

“Yes, we cannot forget our mission here,” Edelgard said.

“You know, you two are _so_ alike,” Claude said. “Have you ever thought you might’ve been siblings separated at birth?” he asked, slapping Dimitri on the back.

Dimitri sucked air through his teeth. “S-Simply laughable,” he muttered.

“Perish the thought,” Edelgard said. If any of her siblings were still alive, she would know.

* * *

Eventually, they found the house the Agarthan raiders had been using as a base of operations. It wasn’t much—Edelgard figured it was only used for a supply depot, and the only supplies to be found were weapons and armor. The house was rustic and homely, dusty and cobwebby (and to a mouse, the cobwebs were _enormous),_ and all of the little personal touches of its former occupants had been stripped away and dashed against the floor. Some of the walls had been crudely torn down to open up the floor space, and crates and boxes full of weapons littered the floor and stretched from floor to ceiling. A pile of bloodstained human-sized cutlery was piled against one wall lengthwise, stretching along the wall’s length from tip to tip and rising nearly to the ceiling.

“So _that’s_ what happens to forks that go missing from the dining hall,” Annette said, squeezing through what little floor space was uncluttered. The aisles in between the crates were narrow enough that even mice could only slip through in single-file lines. There must have been hundreds of weapons stockpiled here.

As disappointed as he seemed to be, Claude was still eager to refill his quiver. “Well, better make the most of it. Don’t be shy, Bernie—you’re running low on arrows, too.”

“Jackpot!” Balthus cried out, plucking out a double-headed battleaxe from the makeshift garrison.

“Why’s some of the stuff so nice down here,” Hapi asked, weighing a well-crafted steel sword against a crude bit of jagged iron tied with a leather thong to a lump of wood, “and the rest of it so… crappy?” The cruder weapons outnumbered the proper ones ten to one, at least.

“The nice looking ones are remnants from the old times, when everyone lived in these towns,” Matthias explained, rummaging through a crate of polearms. He hefted one of the nicer spears, stars in his eyes as he beheld it. “In the camps where most of us live, we just can’t make ‘em like this anymore! All we’ve got is the stuff we’ve held onto from the Golden Age, and that’s like, five generations old—I wouldn’t have seen this many Golden Age weapons if I’d lived for ten years! I didn’t know the towns still had blacksmiths working…”

“Well, _this_ one doesn’t anymore,” Hapi pointed out. “Wish we’d found this place our first time through, though.”

“I’ve only seen the slitherers carrying junk weapons so far,” Edelgard said, “even the ones accompanying high-ranking personnel like Myson.” She rifled through the collection of axes, though Matthias gave her a forlorn, pleading look as if to say, _‘what, my legendary heirloom battleaxe passed down from the Golden Age isn’t good enough for you?’_

“They’ve probably allocated the good weapons for defending their stronghold,” Claude said. “Hey, Bernie, you’ve been down here longer than I—any chance you know how well _these_ fly?” he asked, plucking a pawful of knitting needles out of the arrow stockpiles.

“Oh, u-um…” Bernadetta kneaded her paws. “N-Not so good. Terrible, actually. But not as bad as matches or porcupine quills.”

“Aw. That’s disappointing. Maybe they’ll come in handy if I find some thread to go along with them.” Claude put a few in his quiver anyway. “Wait, did you say ‘porcupine quills?’”

Bernadetta nodded.

He grinned. “Good on you for trying to make _those_ work.”

Constance, who’d been keeping watch outside, burst through the door, Marianne trailing close behind her. “Everybody!” she called out. “We have guests arriving!”

“They just passed through the front gate,” Marianne added. “Four wagons.”

“Can you tell their numbers?” Dimitri asked, testing the durability of one of the nicer glaives by trying to break it over his knee. It broke. He tossed it aside, much to Matthias’ chagrin.

“Six soldiers on each wagon, one mage per cart,” Marianne said, “so twenty-eight… A few rats, too, so about an even thirty. I’m sorry.”

“Must be here to pick up some supplies,” Hapi said.

“Well, they’re gonna _get_ a _surprise,”_ Claude said. “Bernie, you and I are gonna climb up onto the roof and take up sniping positions. Marianne, you’re with us, too. Hang back, keep an eye on the battle with us, and cast healing spells on anyone who needs one. Balthus, Hapi, Matthias, head out and meet them head-on as soon as I give my signal.”

“Alright,” Balthus said, “but you’d better give it soon!”

“We cannot let any of them retreat,” Dimitri said, picking out a lance and opting not to stress-test it.

“Good point,” Claude replied. “Can’t let them get word back to base. Annette, Constance, go through the side streets, flank them, and blow up their wagons. Dimitri, Edelgard, get behind them and cut off their escape route.”

Dimitri looked at Edelgard nervously. “Both of us?”

“You two are our close-quarters heavy hitters,” Claude explained to him with a knowing wink. “C’mon. You two could stand to get to know each other better.”

“No need to be nervous,” Edelgard said to Dimitri, hastily scavenging for a few piecemeal scraps of armor. After the exhausting back-to-back fights that had sapped so much of her stamina yesterday, she was more than willing to act a little more cautiously today. “I won’t be your opponent. Bernadetta?”

Bernadetta looked up from the arrow cache. “Y-Yes, El—Edelgard?”

“Don’t let Claude talk you into doing anything stupid. You take orders from me, not him.”

She nodded.

* * *

In the world of tactics, there was an old saying that no plan survives contact. Edelgard had seen that adage play out often enough in training missions and mock battles with the rest of the class to know that even someone as preternaturally skilled as her professor wasn’t immune to a plan going wrong.

Claude’s plan actually survived contact fairly well, in the sense that he and Bernadetta had begun peppered the invading battalion with arrows as the wagons rolled down the street, Annette and Constance had taken shots at the wagons from the alleyways and managed to upend two of the four right away, and just as the battalion had started to turn back, Edelgard and Dimitri had reached their positions in front of the gate to block their path.

In other words, things had gotten off to a promising start. Where that start had stopped had been around the point at which one of the mages had fired off a potent dark magic spell and brought a house down on Constance. One could know an enemy’s numbers ahead of time, but it wasn’t until blade met blade that one could truly gauge an enemy’s strength. And this enemy was strong.

The clash of steel on steel rang in Edelgard’s ears and rattled her bones as she fended off a strike from one of the rats’ forks and leaped out of the path of a soldier’s blade. Dimitri buried his lance in a soldier’s chest, but was thrown back by a blast of fire before he could wrench it free, knocking him to the floor and leaving his weapon buried in the chest of his fallen foe like the mast of a ship. Another soldier attacked him while he was still struggling to get back up, steam rising from a smoldering patch of his fur; Edelgard swung her axe, caught the soldier in the back as he rushed past her, and severed his spine in two, dropping him to the floor.

“Your support is much appreciated, Edelgard,” Dimitri hissed through gritted teeth, picking himself up off the floor as a soft glow courtesy of Marianne’s long-range healing spells wreathed the charred, blackened burn on his shoulder. “Thank you.”

“As of right now, it would be inconvenient for me if you were killed,” she said.

“I hope there is never a time when it is convenient.” Dimitri caught another soldier bare-handed, wrenched the sword from his grasp, and cut him down with it.

Edelgard felt a blade clang off the armor she’d bound to one shoulder, whirled around to face her attacker—and found him falling to the floor with an arrow protruding from his forehead.

“We’ll make short work of these fiends yet,” Dimitri added, wrenching his lance free just in time to parry a strike from one of the fork-wielding rats. “So long as they keep trying to retreat.”

The two of them together kept pressing the enemy away from the gate, penning them from behind as Annette picked them off from the side alley and Balthus, Hapi, and Matthias boxed them in from the front.

 _“Marianne, cast silence on these mages!”_ Claude called out. _“Don’t let them warp away!”_

Another soldier tried to run past Edelgard; she swung her axe, but missed, and the soldier grabbed her and tackled her to the floor, claws scraping against armor and biting into flesh as he tried to scurry over her and rush to the gate. Edelgard jammed the head of her axe deep enough into his side to crush all his ribs and threw him off her.

Before she could pick herself up, one of the rats was looming over her, standing tall on its hind legs with its forelegs raised and a silver fork glistening with bloodstains gripped in its paws. Her legs felt slow and sluggish as she tried to pull herself out of the makeshift spear’s downward trajectory—

A razor-sharp gust of wind whizzed overhead and sliced off its forelegs at the elbow; almost immediately afterward, a spike of dark magic ripped itself through the rat’s heart, killing it instantly. Edelgard only barely managed to slip out of its path as it fell forward and collapsed to the floor.

Behind the rat, Hapi grimaced and clutched a bloodstained paw to her side. “Try to steal my kill, will you, Chirpy?” she spat in Annette’s general direction. “Could really use your help keeping my guts inside me right now, Snow White!” she called out to Marianne.

Edelgard felt the floor beneath her grow worryingly warm; before she knew it, Dimitri had wrapped his arm around her and thrown the both of them clear of the plume of fire and half-molten stone that burst up through the floor.

The mage who’d cast the spell traced another seal in the air, preparing another attack, before an arrow struck him in the shoulder and knocked him off from his perch atop one of the remaining wagons. Another arrow glanced off his beaked mask.

Things were turning out to be somewhat more difficult than expected, true, but overall Claude’s plan was—

 _“Oh, crap!”_ Claude’s voice rang out through the air. _“Edelgard, Dimitri, you’ve got company!”_

Edelgard looked up and caught sight of another wagon packed with soldiers barreling toward the town gates at full tilt. _“The driver!”_ she shouted out to Bernadetta and Claude as she and Dimitri hurried to get clear. _“Shoot the driver!”_

A field of dark spikes burst up from the floor just outside the gate, halting the wagon in its tracks; a split second later, two arrows found their marks in its driver’s chest. Freed from the black-cloaked mage’s thrall, the rat pulling the wagon suddenly became aware of its indentured servitude and began to panic, dragging the wagon around haphazardly as the soldiers riding it leaped to the floor.

Eight more soldiers—six swordsmice, two archers. Now it was Edelgard and Dimitri who were defending from two sides. It was all Balthus, Hapi, and Matthias could do to pick away at the main body of the enemy formation, Annette was dragging Constance out of a pile of rubble, and Claude and Bernadetta were just as concerned with dodging salvos from the remaining mages and archers as they were with picking off the enemy from the rooftops.

Dimitri let out a frustrated grunt as he speared one of the swordsmice and threw the body at the others, knocking a few more of them to the floor. Edelgard shared his frustration. If they struggled this much here, then taking the Agarthan stronghold in the southern end of Abyss would be even more of an uphill battle. If only they had more manpower…

Edelgard felt a surge of warmth and a blossom of pain bloom in her side as a spearhead slipped between her ribs; a gray tunnel collapsed her line of sight as her legs grew weak. Her strength fading fast, she brought her axe down on the haft of the spear, cutting it in two, and with another stroke cleaved the soldier’s head from his shoulders.

 _“Edelgard!”_ Bernadetta cried out from the rooftops.

Dimitri brought his lance crashing down on one of the soldiers’ heads with so much force that the haft splintered and snapped in two like a twig; the business end of the lance went flying while he was left holding a short, splintered stick. “The _one_ spear I don’t stress-test,” he growled, jabbing the broken length of wood into an enemy’s throat. _“El!”_

As Edelgard ripped the spearhead out of her side and fell to her knees, Dimitri’s voice rang in her ears and— _what_ had he just called her?!

Perhaps because Marianne had been alerted by Bernadetta’s outcry, Edelgard almost immediately felt the unique inside-twisting sensation of a long-range healing spell run through her body. The airy lightheadedness that had seized her fell away, as did the gray mist crowding her eyes; strength flowed back into her legs. How much healing magic, she wondered, did that waif have left in her?

 _“To the eternal flames, all of you!”_ Dimitri snarled, doing as much damage with the least useful half of a spear as possible (which, surprisingly, was a lot). “Edelgard, are you okay?”

Rejuvenated, Edelgard responded by striking down a mouse who’d been aiming for his back. She must have imagined Dimitri calling her ‘El,’ she decided. It had probably been Bernadetta shouting out for her, and the shock and blood loss had just momentarily affected her hearing.

A knitting needle struck the floor, wedging itself between the stone tiles and trailing a taut length of thread; a split second later, Claude came sailing down from on high, his bow held overhead and sliding against the thread to form a makeshift zipline. He let go, careened into a swordsmouse nipping at Dimitri’s flank and knocked him off his feet, and drew a sword from his belt.

“A pleasure for you to join us,” Edelgard said.

“The pleasure is all yours, Princess,” Claude said. He yawned as he parried a blow that had been meant for her. “Bernie and I were getting a little bored up there…”

“Then perhaps try doing a better job of hitting your enemies.”

Bernadetta cried out again—but this one was a wordless cry of shock and pain; Edelgard looked up to see her fall from the roof of a nearby building and plummet to the street, an arrow protruding from her thigh.

 _“Bernadetta!”_ she cried out. The heat boiling in her chest, the heat of the Crest of Flames scorched into her blood, set her veins alight; she charged through each foe between herself and Bernadetta, cutting with mightier swings of her axe than any mortal might could offer and felling each of them with a single stroke.

Bernadetta rolled onto her back, drawing back her bowstring and taking aim as best she could and firing; the air zipped past Edelgard’s ear and there was a pained, gurgling cry from behind her as another soldier fell with an arrow in his throat, his arm still raised and an axe clutched in his paw.

Edelgard set her axe down and knelt at Bernadetta’s side, slipping a paw under her head and helping her sit up. “How bad is it?”

“My leg hurts,” Bernadetta mumbled, looking up with hazy eyes. “Just the one… somehow. I-If I die, I’m gonna haunt you, okay? But, like, the _good_ kind of haunting…”

“I was not aware there was a good kind of haunting. But never mind; you’re fine.”

Bernadetta nodded, then shook her head as though to throw aside the pain that had clouded her eyes. “Can you… help me shoot again?”

Edelgard nodded, then propped her up and helped her nock another arrow and draw back her bowstring. At the same moment, an aura of healing energy swirled around Bernadetta, and Edelgard could feel the strength returning to the arms she was holding steady. Together, they took aim and fired into the crowd.

From this vantage point, she could see the crowd of enemies thinning, the pockets of allies scattered about their ranks working through their dwindling numbers: Dimitri, one arm limp at his side and the other pressed to his shoulder to staunch a river of blood, kicking his enemies aside as Matthias struck them down for him; Constance, leaning on Annette for support, encasing an enemy’s head in a blossom of ice crystals; Balthus throwing enemies from one end of the street to another with mighty blows; Hapi dueling the last remaining mage, their bursts of dark energy crashing against each other like waves against rocks.

 _“We’ve almost got this!”_ Claude shouted out, tossing aside his sword and swiftly drawing his bow to pick off a soldier rushing toward Constance and Annette. _“Just hang in there that much longer, guys!”_

A bolt of white light from Marianne struck the mage in the side, breaking his concentration as he struggled to deflect one of Hapi’s attacks; her dark fire cut into him and left a charred corpse behind. Edelgard grinned. It felt oddly nostalgic to see an ally wielding dark magic; it wasn’t so different from seeing Hubert in action.

It wasn’t too long until the last enemy fell. It was a total rout. The bodies of thirty raiders, mingled with the wreckage of burning and abandoned wagons, were strewn across the street. For a while, no sound filled the air but the sound of popping and crackling flames and a few coughs and sniffles.

“Alright!” Claude held up his paw. “Everyone alive here, sound off!”

One by one, everyone sounded off.

“No casualties on our side? Great!” He clapped his paws. “Flawless victory, everyone! Great work!”

“Hold on, weren’t you gonna keep a few of ‘em alive to interrogate?” Matthias asked him.

As if on cue, a few of the fallen soldiers stirred.

“Ah, there we go.” Claude kicked an errant bit of wood. “Balthus, collect the living ones and tie them up somewhere. We’ll question them once we’ve had some time to rest up and recover.”

“If these scavengers with third-rate weapons give us this much trouble,” Dimitri said soberly as Marianne rushed to tend to his shoulder (so weary she could hardly walk a straight line), “perhaps we should rethink our plan to retake the stronghold.” He looked down at the carnage, seemingly sickened by the number of the dead.

Edelgard helped Bernadetta to her feet and walked her toward the others, passing by the soldier with an arrow sticking out of his throat who’d been felled in mid-swing of his axe and feeling a distinct sense of deja-vu. That made _how_ many times now that Bernadetta had saved her life with her archery skills in the past week?

“Dimitri has a point,” she told Claude. “If your theory is correct, then we won’t be able to outmatch the stronghold’s forces for quality of equipment.”

“Don’t you worry about that,” Claude assured her, flashing a devil-may-care smirk. “Our strategy here was about quickly overwhelming the enemy with superior strength from multiple vectors, and the arms imbalance paid off in our favor.” He tapped his finger against his forehead. “But that’s not how you take a stronghold.”

_“Aw, man! We missed all the fun!”_

Edelgard’s ears twitched. A voice on the wind, carried by the same air that carried the rank stench of the sewage canal into the city. But unlike that awful odor, the voice was as welcome as the clarion call of a royal trumpeter, as annoying as it was, because the voice belonged to none other than…

 _“Edelgard!”_ Caspar cried out, and she whirled around and saw her rambunctious classmate barreling full tilt toward her. Except…

_Oh, no._

He was just as small as her, and just as covered in fur, and had just as big ears, and had a tail and whiskers and everything else a mouse would have.

He was a mouse.

Other than that, though, he didn’t look much different from the Caspar she knew. “Wow! Is that really you?” He let out a joyous, surprised little laugh as he scurried over to her. _“Hey, guys! She’s here!”_ he cried out behind him. “And Bernie-Bear, too!”

Before Bernadetta could protest, he was upon her, sweeping her up in a spine-crushing bear hug. _“Caspar…”_ she squeaked. _“Can’t… breathe…”_

“Oh, man, Bernie, it’s so good to see you!” he exclaimed. “Ferdinand’s gonna be so happy when we get back to him! You know, he took _you_ going missing really hard; these past two days he’s just been saying ‘I hope poor Bernadetta is safe and well’ at totally random intervals…”

“Caspar,” Edelgard said, “why are you a mouse?”

“Long story,” he said, finally letting go of Bernadetta only to spy the other mice. “Whoa! Claude, Dimitri! I _knew_ we’d find you guys down here, too!”

Edelgard barely had time to gather her wits about her before Linhardt rushed up to her. “Hello, Your Highness,” he said, just as much of a mouse as Caspar. He and Caspar were both wearing tattered, ill-fitting tunics—unlike Caspar’s, which was just a bit too long, his was just a bit too short. “Glad to see you’re well.”

“Linhardt,” Edelgard said, “why are _you_ a mouse?”

“Same story,” he said. “Hi, Bernadetta. Nice to see you again. Caspar didn’t crush anything, did he?”

Bernadetta gingerly prodded her ribs and nodded.

“Good.” He yawned. “I’m spent. Don’t think I have the energy to do any more healing today.”

Claude clapped him on the shoulder. “Sorry, but you’re gonna have to spend a little more.”

Linhardt looked to the injured gaggle of mice, then looked down at the bloody corpses littering the street, and gagged.

“Is anyone _else_ from our class a mouse now?” Edelgard asked him, dreading the answer. If the Agarthans had gotten to the entire Black Eagles…

“Well…” he said, taking a deep breath. “Not _everyone_ else, but…”

Almost as though on cue, she felt an oddly familiar paw fall on her shoulder; she slowly turned around, feeling her heartbeat race, and found herself staring into a very familiar pair of piercing, haunting steel-gray eyes—set in a very unfamiliar mousy face.

The mouse had dark gray fur, gray like a very familiar jacket, and had a shaggy mane of dark blue-green hair, deep blue-green like dried seaweed, and sheathed in a crude sword-belt at her waist was a spiny fossil of a sword made from something that more resembled bone than metal with a conspicuous hole bored through its crossguard.

 _“P-Professor!”_ Bernadetta cried out. “Th-They got you, too?”

“Professor?!” Dimitri exclaimed, his eye wide.

“Aw, Teach!” Claude gasped.

Edelgard felt her heart sink into the pit of her stomach and staggered back. “Professor…” she gasped, her breath hitching as it caught in her throat. “Professor, no…”

Byleth nodded. “It’s not too bad,” she said, scratching behind one ear. She’d scavenged mouse-sized clothes from somewhere as well—a battered tweed jacket was draped over her shoulders. “I think I’m getting used to it.” She motioned to the mice behind her. “Lysithea, Catherine, tend to the wounded.”

For Edelgard, hearing her teacher’s voice coming out of a mouse was equal parts unnerving and relieving. For some reason, all she could do was laugh. It burst out of her, just a single sharp peal of laughter, like a soap bubble popping. “It is… so like you to say that, my teacher,” she said. Yet the horror flooded back all too soon, in spite of that moment of mirth. “Still… oh, Professor, I had hoped that of all people, _you_ would not have met this fate…”

The taller brown mouse at Byleth’s side let out a gregarious laugh. Edelgard vaguely recognized his loud voice—one of the Knights of Seiros, Alois. “Bernadetta, is that _you?_ We’ve been worried sick!” he cried out, sweeping her off her feet and hugging her tight. “Thank the Goddess you’re okay! Oh, and don’t fret—no one ‘got’ your professor; _she_ ‘got’ herself!”

“I don’t understand,” Edelgard replied, dazed, as she continued to stare blankly at the mouse who had once been her teacher.

“We needed an extra mouse to escape a trap,” Byleth explained. “While Hubert and Ferdinand were arguing about which of them would drink the rest of the poison, I stepped in and made the decision for them.”

That only raised further questions—too many for Edelgard to ask at once. Hubert was down here? Were _all_ the other Black Eagles with him, too? Where were they? Were they still _human?_

“You… turned _yourself_ into a mouse to save them?” She felt her heart flutter with an emotion she couldn’t quite pin down. Respect, elation, sorrow, regret, a contradictory melange roiling within her. That her teacher had come down here to rescue her—that she had willingly sacrificed the very thing that Edelgard had had ripped away from her—made her head spin. So many different emotions tugged at her from every angle; it was as though she were being drawn and quartered. She sat down, because the only alternative was to fall forward and straight into her professor’s arms. “Again… how like you, Professor.”

“It’s a long story, Edelgard,” Byleth said, crouching beside her and laying a comforting paw on her shoulder. “I’m sure yours and everyone else’s are, too. Why don’t we sit down somewhere and tell them?”

* * *

With everyone settled into the inn (or, as Claude thought of it, their temporary base of operations) and those who needed it freshly bathed (and by the _gods,_ had he needed it) and their wounds mended, it was time to talk tactics and plan the assault on these slitherers’ headquarters down in Mousehaven (what creative names the mice gave their towns). And so he called everybody to the foyer, moved all the chairs aside—there weren’t enough for everyone, and he didn’t want to play favorites—and had everyone sit in a circle.

“Let’s get something out of the way first,” he said as everyone else settled into their positions. “If we’re going to be working together, we all need a good understanding of our capabilities. So let’s lay it all on the table for everyone to see. Let’s talk Crests.”

Nothing but blank stares from the others.

“Is… that a question any of us need to answer?” Dimitri asked, confused, as he finished buttoning up the adorable little mouse-sized tunic he’d picked up from somewhere in the inn. Everyone here had found something to wear, except for Balthus, who hadn’t found anything in his size, and Matthias, whose ratty robes had somehow gone missing. “For the three of us, at least, our bloodlines are well known.”

“Unless you’re suggesting that one of us is an illegitimate heir,” Edelgard said. She’d found some clothes at the inn and armor at the supply depot, too, but had kept the ragged presumably-red cloak she’d been wearing, which was so dirty that wearing it sort of defeated the purpose of being clean. She wore it like something that had sentimental value. “But if anybody here raises questions regarding their legitimacy, it would be the one of us who appeared out of nowhere last year to suddenly claim his grandfather’s inheritance.”

Claude held a paw to his heart. “You wound me, Edelgard. But you’re right. And of course, I’ve done plenty of research on all of you, so none of you have anything new to tell me.”

He could have sworn he saw a tiny smirk, though not a happy one by any stretch of the imagination, tug on the corner of Edelgard’s mouth.

“This,” he added, “is more for the benefit of—”

As if on cue, Matthias set aside the towel he’d been using to dry the last of his fur and raised his paw. “Er, excuse me… what’s a Crest?”

Claude shrugged and crossed his arms. “See? It’s not just the leaders who need to understand their teammates’ capabilities.”

“Crests are blessings from the Goddess,” Catherine explained to the mouse. “They are a powerful magic bestowed on the Ten Elites one thousand years ago. The descendants of those heroes carry those blessings in their blood as a reminder of the devotion of their ancestors to the Goddess.” Claude could have _sworn_ he’d seen Edelgard roll her eyes at that spiel, but it could have just been his imagination.

Matthias whistled, impressed.

They also made people do crazy things to their children, Claude mused. So many unwanted noble-born children out there all just because they weren’t born with the Crests their parents wanted… and those were the _lucky_ ones.

“How about I go first?” he volunteered. “As the recently-discovered grandson of Duke Oswald von Riegan, I’ve got a minor Crest of Riegan. Sometimes, it kicks in when I’m hurt and speeds up the healing process.”

“So, what your saying is that we can really let you take a beating in combat next time,” Edelgard said, a sly smile crossing her face.

“What I said was, _‘sometimes.’_ Anyway, why don’t you go next, Miss Empress-to-Be?” he asked. It just so happened that she was sitting to his right, so he could just say they were going counterclockwise through the group if she accused him of singling her out.

Edelgard seemed even more miffed by his irreverent little moniker than usual. “Alright. I have a minor Crest of Seiros. Sometimes it makes me stronger.” Her tone was clipped, guarded; either she didn’t like talking about Crests at all or she was holding something back.

Claude nodded. “Good to know. What about you, Bernadetta?”

Bernadetta froze up and looked to Edelgard, who gave her a subtle, curt nod. “U-Um… C-Crest of Indech,” she stammered. “Minor. It, um… helps me… react to things faster?”

“So that’s how you pulled off those shots,” Claude told her. Back in the thick of it, she’d been drawing, nocking, and shooting two arrows in the span of time even he would take to fire _one._ “Thought I noticed something special about you whenever I spied you in the shooting gallery.”

“You… you’ve been _spying_ on me?” she gasped, shrinking away. Edelgard very subtly inched closer to her, as though to comfort her without ruining her icy, stoic image.

“Well, yeah, I spy on _everyone._ Don’t take it personally,” he assured her. She didn’t seem much assured. “Dimitri?”

Dimitri nodded and ruffled his fur. Now that he’d washed out the dirt and blood, his fur was as lustrous as gold leaf; Claude realized that he really, _really_ wanted to pet it. “I bear a minor Crest of Blaiddyd. It does the same thing as Edelgard’s, mostly. When it activates, my strength doubles. It does so… often.”

“Huh, so that’s why you keep breaking things.” Claude looked directly at him. “Sounds to me like you and Edelgard have a lot in common, though.” He was rewarded by a subtly uncomfortable frown on Dimitri’s face and an almost pleading look in his single eye. “Alright. Annette?”

“Minor Crest of Dominic!” Annette blurted out eagerly. “It makes casting spells easier.”

“Thanks. Balthus?”

Balthus grinned. “Alright, here’s a great story for you guys! See, the history books don’t say this, but there were these four—”

Hapi drove the butt of her axe into his foot. _“We’re not supposed to talk about that,”_ she hissed.

Claude felt a rush of manic energy seize him from tip to tail. Secrets! His new friends had new secrets!

“Alright,” Balthus gasped, sighing in relief as soon as Hapi took the axe from his foot. “I got a Crest. Can’t say who it’s from. It’s kinda like yours, Claude! Except I gotta land a pretty mighty blow for it to work.” He chuckled. “Then again, _all_ my blows are pretty mighty.”

“Ahem!” Next in line, Constance cleared her throat before Claude could call her name. She’d found all the gaudiest clothes before anyone else could and proudly wore them all layered on top of each other. The ostentatious display made Claude glad he was colorblind. “Unlike you with your piffling _minor_ Crests, I, Constance of the once-illustrious House Nuvelle, possess a _major_ Crest of… er…” She glanced at Hapi. “Macuil. Sometimes, when I use magic, it feels like I have expended no effort at all, although I assure you, the results are just as unparalleled!” She leaned back and gave the drowsy pet bat resting behind her a coy little scratch under its chin. “Someday all will know the name of Constance von Nuvelle, super genius! Isn’t that right, Bruce?”

Claude noticed the hesitation in her answer. Another person here not telling the whole truth. He’d deal with that later. He nodded. “Alright, super genius. Hapi?”

Hapi looked even more disinterested than usual. “Yeah, Claudester?”

“Do you have a Crest?”

“Nope.”

Claude had the feeling she was lying. “So that stuff you can do with monsters and critters, that isn’t…”

She glared daggers at him. Claude glanced at Balthus and Constance and noticed the subtle shakes of their heads and the shared looks of _may the gods have mercy on your soul_ in their eyes.

“Okay. No crest, neat power regardless.” She _definitely_ had a Crest, and Claude was going to figure out what it was sooner or later. “Good to know. Catherine, you’ve got the Crest of Charon, right?”

Catherine nodded proudly, thumping her chest. “Yup. Major Crest of Charon. Adds some extra punch to my punches sometimes. And, of course, it lets me wield Thunderbrand! Not that that does much good down here…”

“No Crest for me,” Caspar said as soon as Claude turned to him. He nudged Linhardt in the side to wake him up.

Linhardt snapped awake. “Minor Crest of Cethleann,” he rattled off, the quickness and alertness of his response making it seem as though he’d heard everything, even while asleep. “Makes my healing magic stronger in a pinch. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that, though.” And with his piece said, he laid back down and closed his eyes and resumed his cat-nap.

“No Crest for me, either,” Alois offered. “I’m so hopeless at magic, even my blood is bad at it!”

Dimitri snickered. Claude tried to hold back his shock. Dimitri had just… _laughed?_ At one of _Alois’_ jokes? What was going on?

He moved on through the circle. “Alright… Marianne?” Now _she_ was a mystery. She didn’t hold the burden of her secrets as easily as he or Edelgard did. She kept her secrets, but the pain of keeping them leaked out, even if the secrets themselves never did. “You don’t have a Crest, do you?”

Marianne shared a furtive glance with Dimitri, which Claude found _very_ curious indeed. He’d never seen her talk much to people outside her house. She barely talked to people in her class as it was! And here those two were, the adopted daughter of Margrave Edmund and the Prince of Faerghus, stealing glances like two people nursing a schoolyard crush.

She shook her head. “I don’t,” she mumbled, her voice barely audible. “And if I did… it would just be a burden to everyone anyway.”

Claude observed the rest of the team. A look of sympathy from _Edelgard_ of all people, but it was fleeting.

“And we’re all aware that Teach here has the legendary Crest of Flames,” he summed up, eyeing Byleth. “Now… what exactly does _that_ thing do?”

Byleth’s paw curled around the hilt of the Sword of the Creator. “It lets me wield this. Beyond that, I’m not entirely sure. I think it drains the life force from those I kill. Honestly, I try not to think about it.”

“I wouldn’t, either,” Claude said. He turned to his left. “Alright, Lysithea. You’re last.”

Lysithea stiffened. “Crest of Gloucester. Not like I _use_ it, though,” she scoffed, itching at her clothes. She’d stolen the black robes from one of the fallen masked mages and wore it with a sort of vengeful pride. “I never even asked for it.”

Okay, now _there_ was a lie. A big one.

“Lysithea has two crests,” Linhardt piped up, awakening solely to say that and then immediately going back to sleep.

The circle broke out in an uproar. Lysithea stood up, infuriated; bolts of dark magic crackled around her paws. “Linhardt, you rat! How could you!” she snarled. Claude and Byleth both had to grab her by the arms and force her back down to the floor before she could cross the circle and incinerate poor Linhardt. For the youngest student at Garreg Mach, she was surprisingly strong when she was angry; Claude felt as though pulling her down had nearly dislocated his shoulders. Byleth, he had to admit, did most of the work.

“Thanks, Teach,” he said once Lysithea had been more restrained. “Lysithea, I’m sorry about Linhardt, but he’s got a point. We need to know your capabilities. _All_ of your capabilities.”

He noticed an uncomfortable look from Edelgard to his right. So she _was_ still hiding something. Something big.

“I’ll give you all the candy you can stomach once we get back to the surface if you tell us,” he promised.

“What does it even matter about my Crests?” Lysithea spat, heated. She shook her fists. “So what if I have the Crest of Gloucester _and_ the Crest of Charon?”

Catherine leaped to her feet, elated. “The Crest of Charon! I _knew_ it! I’d always thought there was something familiar about you! Two Crests; what a blessing from the Goddess!”

“Blessing? _Blessing?_ I don’t _care_ about my Crests!” Lysithea shouted at her. “I don’t _use_ them! I didn’t ask for them; I wasn’t even _born_ with them! All they do is hold me back!”

Edelgard looked as though she’d seen a ghost. Her pale eyes were wide, her mouth hanging slightly agape. She noticed Claude looking at her and hurriedly composed herself.

An uncomfortable silence descended over the circle in the aftermath of Lysithea’s outburst.

Claude patted her on the shoulder. “I’m sorry. I had no idea you felt that way. But I’m sure it must feel pretty good to get that off your chest, huh?” To have two Crests must have been an incredible burden indeed; it was no wonder Lysithea had such little stamina in spite of her incredible aptitude for magic.

And she hadn’t been _born_ with them? Who in Fódlan would have _given_ them to her? The church? Or someone else?

She pushed his paw away. “Don’t you start, Claude,” she snapped, still fuming.

Claude gave her his patented ‘I did my best’ shrug, then turned to Edelgard. “Okay, Edelgard? Do you have something else to share with the class?”

Edelgard slowly turned to face him, her eyes steely and jaw set. “Excuse me?” she asked, her voice iron and venom. “I’ve already told you, I have the Crest of—”

“Don’t play dumb. We can all see how you reacted to Lysithea’s revelation. And putting that together with your low stamina in spite of your great strength, just like her… and your unnaturally white hair, just like her…”

Lysithea let out a little gasp. _“No…”_

“Tell us about your Crest, Edelgard. Not your Crest of Seiros—your _other_ Crest.”

Everyone looked at Claude as though he’d grown a second head. Then they looked at Edelgard with equal parts awe, disbelief, and confusion.

The picture of stoicism, Edelgard said nothing. Bernadetta nudged her gently in the side. She didn’t even react. Edelgard’s eyes bored into Claude’s; a silent fury smoldered there.

“Come on, Edelgard. We have to trust each other if we’re going to make it down here,” he told her. “That means we can’t keep secrets about our abilities. We’ve got to put all our cards on the table, even the aces up our sleeves, okay?”

Byleth stood up and broke ranks, crossing behind Lysithea and Claude to offer a consoling paw to Edelgard. “Tell them.”

Edelgard took a deep breath. Her gaze flitted up and over her shoulder toward Byleth once, then fixed itself forward. Not _at_ anybody in particular—just _forward,_ a thousand yards forward.

“Like my professor,” she said, with not a trace of emotion in her voice, “I, too, bear the Crest of Flames. Like Lysithea with her Crests, it was forced upon me.”

Everyone’s mouths gaped open. Claude couldn’t quite place the look on Lysithea’s face. Sympathy, but also… the shared pain of loss. Grief.

“Who did it to you?” Lysithea asked, her voice barely a whisper.

“The very same enemy we face down here—those who slither in the dark. Too many have been sacrificed on an altar of blood for their twisted aims. We must stop them.”

“Yes,” Dimitri said. “At all costs, we must.”

Claude sighed, emotionally exhausted from all the commotion, and stood up from his position in the circle. “Well, we learned a lot about each other here. When we hit Mousehaven tomorrow, we’ll hit it with everything we’ve got,” he said. “Now let’s spend the rest of the day talking tactics and practicing a few formations, then pack it in and get a good night’s sleep. We’ll all need it.”

Matthias piped up. “So, these Crests. Kinda a big to-do about them, then?”

* * *

A long day followed—interminable, like all the days down here—of planning, questioning captured soldiers, quarreling, revising and revising plans over Matthias’ tattered little map, occasionally teasing Dimitri and Edelgard about each other just to see the look on their faces, and practicing, but by the end of it, or rather what he thought was the end, Claude didn’t feel particularly tired. Perhaps it was anxious energy. Mice seemed to have a lot of it, after all—he guessed that was just how prey animals worked.

He preferred to rise and set with the sun—awake at daybreak, asleep by sunset—but down here in Abyss, where there was no sun, it was hard to stick to that schedule, or at least to be sure he was sticking to it. And he couldn’t discount the possibility that turning into a mouse had radically altered his internal clock; after all, wild mice were _supposed_ to be mainly nocturnal. Then again, none of the mice here were exactly wild.

He paced for a while in the bedroom he’d picked out for himself, occasionally looking out the window and leaning over the sill, craning his neck to see if he could catch a glimpse of the little town’s little clock tower. No church bells to toll in a cannibal ghost town, after all.

For the last time, he confirmed that he couldn’t. Surely it was getting late. Maybe he should just go to bed and trust himself to sleep for the next ten or so hours. Or maybe…

He leaned out further, planted his feet on the windowsill, dug his claws into the wooden outside wall to steady himself…

_“Claude?”_

The sound of Dimitri’s voice, so suddenly intruding on his little sanctuary, made him jump—almost out the window. His pulse racing, he quickly pulled himself back through the window. “Yeah?” he asked Dimitri as the prince stood at the threshold.

He nearly burst out laughing at the sight of him. Dimitri had found a pair of mouse-sized trousers to go along with his tunic now, and all it did was make him look _even more adorable._ He was a fluffy golden-furred mouse wearing a dapper little ensemble! He looked like something out of a children’s storybook!

“What?” Dimitri asked, furrowing his furry brow adorably. “What is that look on your face for?”

“Oh, nothing.” Claude had to admit that since he’d found a set of clothes of his own, he probably looked just as cute. If only Hilda could see him now… “So… awfully bold of you to choose to room with a scheming, poisoning double-crosser like me. Thought for sure you’d share a room with _El,_ ” he goaded the prince, taking a casual seat on the side of his bed.

“She insists on sleeping alone,” Dimitri said (sounding disappointed), closing the door behind him and sitting down on the other bed on the opposite side of the room. “No more secrets, huh? I have to admit, it sounds… hollow, coming from someone who will not tell me his name.”

Claude shrugged. “Do you need to know _everything_ about someone to trust them? My name won’t make much of a difference on the battlefield.”

“Can you please tell me what it is? I told you about myself and Edelgard. I trusted you with that, against my better judgment,” Dimitri said. There was actually a pleading look in his eye that—

Oh, gods. Dimitri was somehow giving him puppy-dog eyes (or rather eye, singular). Most likely without even noticing. He didn’t have anywhere _near_ enough guile to do it consciously.

“Never took you for the curious type.” Claude yawned. “Okay. Let me tell you a bedtime story, Your Princeliness, and if you’re still awake by the end, I’ll tell you.”

Dimitri sighed. “I supposed I have no choice but to put up with your antics.”

“Alright, here goes.” Claude cleared his throat. “Once upon a time, in a faraway place, there was a young boy who came from a despised lineage. His mother was a daughter of the enemy, you see, so the young boy was treated horribly by everyone around him, family and strangers alike… Wait.”

“What is it?”

“I’ll tell you my name after this story. But…”

“But what?”

“Come over here.”

A little apprehensive, Dimitri stood up and crossed the room, sidestepping the giant candle resting in the center of the floor, and sat down beside him. “What do you want?”

“You’ve _got_ to let me pet you, Dimitri.”

Dimitri recoiled. _“What?”_

“It’s a big secret. You’ve got to do something big for _me._ Let me pet you.”

He looked up at the ceiling as though praying to the Goddess. “Do I want to know _that_ badly?” he muttered, asking himself aloud.

“Yes, of _course_ you do,” Claude told him. “After all, how can you fully trust someone if you don’t know their name? And besides, this might be something you can tease me about in exchange for the hard time I’ve been giving you and _El.”_

“…I really dislike you sometimes,” Dimitri said, relenting.

“No you don’t,” Claude said, and he reached out and started gently raking his fingertips down the nape of Dimitri’s neck. The prince _instantly_ melted. Within a second, he looked like he was about to collapse into a boneless mound of fur and skin.

“Alright,” Claude said, “let’s keep going. So this boy, he hadn’t done anything wrong. He tried to be good, he tried to be kind, but everyone hated him simply for existing. He tried yelling at them, fighting back, when being good and kind didn’t work… and that didn’t either. So he ran away from home to the land of his mother.”

He wasn’t sure if Dimitri was enjoying the story, or if being pet just felt _that_ good. But then he scratched the prince’s ear—it was like running his thumb across a patch of warm felt—and if he hadn’t known any better he’d have half expected him to start purring like a cat.

“But in the land of his mother, they treated him the same way, too, for his father was the son of the enemy,” Claude continued. “So he hid. He changed his name, changed everything he could change; buried what was different and hoped one day that he could unearth it. But until then, he was always alone, always mistrusted, always mistrustful of others. And he wished with all his heart that one day, it would not be so. The end.”

With the story over, he pulled his paw away from Dimitri’s head and let him regain his composure.

Dimitri nodded and awkwardly cleared his throat, clearly trying to put the whole incident out of his mind as quickly as possible. “Please never do that again.”

“Aw, you _looked_ like you were enjoying it.”

“I’d rather not be reminded of what I’ve…” he sighed. “…become. Anyway, that was not much of an ending.”

“It’s sort of a story in progress.”

“So you don’t come from Fódlan?”

“Boy, do you catch on fast.” Claude sighed. “I was hoping that story would put you to sleep, especially with how relaxed you looked…”

From the look on his face, Dimitri was probably blushing all the way up to the tips of his big mousy ears. “I’m not usually as heavy a sleeper as I was last night,” he said “What’s your name, then?”

“Well, guess it’s only fair. You solved my ‘stay awake through one of my boring stories and let me pet you’ puzzle, so here goes…” Claude took a deep breath, suddenly more nervous than he had been in years. Dimitri was a pretty nice guy, he told himself, who was fairly earnest and always polite; he could be trusted. But when he told himself that, he also remembered the snarling storm of violence from last night, the furious cyclone of spearhead and claw and fang, and imagined that storm bearing down on _him._

Well, if he was going to put the cycle of mistrust behind him, it had to start with _someone,_ didn’t it?

“…It’s Khalid,” he said.

Dimitri gasped, a glint of shock and betrayal, and—perhaps there was even a little bit of _hatred—_ in his eye. “K-Khalid? You’re _Almyran!”_

 _“Keep it down!”_ Claude hissed, grabbing him by the shoulders. Gods, he was _still_ all muscle underneath that fur.

“Are you even _related_ to Duke Oswald, or is that more deception, too? Are you part of some Almyran plot to—”

“I have the Crest of Riegan; of _course_ I’m related to him! Told you that whole story and everything, and still…”

Dimitri seemed to calm down a bit at the sound of his dejection. “Oh, right… right. Yes. Of course. I’m sorry—I got carried away. You _did_ say you were from the land of our enemies, after all.”

“Not that I’m one to throw a pity party, but this is exactly what I was talking about,” Claude said. “This is why I tell people I’m just lucky to have a year-round tan. You say you’re a foreigner, and people immediately assume all your loyalties lie elsewhere. It’s maddening.”

“I’m sorry,” Dimitri repeated. “I was just… shocked. To think you’re _Almyran…”_

“What, the dark skin didn’t give it away? Or the ceremonial braid? Or my penchant for exotic spices? Now, I’m aware I don’t quite have the first two right now, on account of being a mouse, but still—”

“No, it’s just… so obvious in hindsight. I just didn’t think it was possible. I suppose it explains how you seemingly came out of nowhere.”

“You’re preaching to the choir. People don’t notice the obvious at all, as long as you make sure they don’t think it’s possible in the first place.”

“Okay, Khalid.” Dimitri laid back on the bed. “So—”

“Claude’s fine. Don’t get in the habit of calling me ‘Khalid’; I don’t think it’ll be safe for me to go by it for a while.”

“Right. So… what exactly _is_ your way?”

Claude laid down on the bed and looked up at the ceiling, wishing the speckled wooden panels were stars. “We’ve drawn all these borders between ourselves and spurred so much mistrust and hatred. Fódlan’s been so insulated for so many years with all these borders, keeping outsiders out and insiders in. But what are all these borders? Just imaginary lines drawn around piles of dirt, really.”

Dimitri flinched. “That’s not what a—” he started, hotly.

“Am I wrong?”

“My kingdom isn’t a pile of _dirt.”_

“Well, look at the border between the Kingdom and the Empire. Imagine you’re standing astride it. Does your left side feel any different from your right? And if you take a handful of soil from each side, is the dirt in your left hand really different from the dirt in your right? And the people: is a peasant on the right side that different from a peasant on the left? And if you were a bird, if you flew as high as you could fly, flew past the peaks of the mountains, flew so high that you couldn’t see the people anymore, and you looked down, would you see any borders?”

Dimitri shook his head, though he still seemed mostly unconvinced. “I wouldn’t, but… you _know_ that Faerghus has much poorer soil than Adrestia. Surely you’ve read about it.”

“I’m not saying everywhere is the same as everywhere else, but if you look at where these borders are, you won’t see any difference between the land on one side and the land on the other. Now think about the border between Fódlan and Almyra. It’s imaginary, too. To end the cycle of mistrust between our people, we need to stop using our imaginations so much and see what’s really out there. Open ourselves up. Open up our borders. Show them that they can trust us. Show us that _we_ can trust _them.”_

Claude watched Dimitri ruminate on his speech. He worried he might have gone a bit too far over the prince’s head.

“I understand how you see things,” Dimitri said. “But people will not so easily change how they see the outside world.”

“Fódlan’s changed plenty of times. The Empire once controlled the whole continent until your kingdom broke free and the Alliance followed. It can change now.”

Dimitri shook his head. “It isn’t the same. The Church of Seiros teaches that other lands are filled with infidels.”

“Am I an infidel?”

“I mean, _by definition,_ yes, you are. I assure you, I don’t mean it as a pejorative or think less of you for it. But opening our borders to all manner of heresies is…” He shook his head, frustrated. “Regardless of what you or I think, the church would never allow it, even with an archbishop as liberal as Lady Rhea. They would sooner put you to death than hear you out. By the Goddess, if _Catherine_ were in the same room as us right now and could hear you, you would already be dead. Unless you could lessen the influence of the church or change its teachings, it would be an insane dream,” he said, laughing at the idea as though it were impossible.

Claude nodded. _Then maybe the Church of Seiros and its knights and archbishop need to have their influence lessened or their teachings changed,_ he wanted to say, but he figured Dimitri might not take that so well. It was always difficult to know how far he could push someone until they encountered an idea that their minds would more vehemently resist. “Well… the insane dreams are the dreams worth chasing.”

“And you forget that when Faerghus seceded from the Empire, there was a _war_ over it before the church stepped in to force a compromise,” Dimitri added, growing more concerned by Claude’s flippant response. “What if you started a war that was worse than the War of the Eagle and Lion over this? Would it not be better to keep things the way they are? We’re living in an unprecedented era of peace—why spoil it?”

“You can worry about war, but what good does peace at all costs do if people just have to suffer in silence for it?”

Dimitri was almost as fierce in his arguing as he was in battle. “Claude, you talk about being an outsider, being hated—but I know what pogroms look like, too. I know how easily people can turn on those of other races. I know how easily innocents can lose their lives to that kind of hysteria and persecution.”

“Then I’ll find a way to do it right,” Claude assured him. Though he had to admit that Dimitri had a point, he felt patronized by the insinuation that he hadn’t gone over these matters in his head a thousand times already. After all, he was _Claude von Riegan,_ and he’d already staked a name for himself as a master tactician here in this school. “Maybe it’ll take me eighty years, but I’ll find a way.”

“You think you’ll live to be one hundred?”

“You don’t?”

In spite of himself, Dimitri laughed. “You’re utterly mad, Claude. For what it’s worth, I hope you find some way to make your insane dream a reality someday.”

Claude laid back. He finally felt tired. “Thanks.”

“But be careful. Be realistic.”

“I think preserving peace is more unrealistic than any of my foolhardy talk.”

“Maybe we can’t have peace forever. But we can have peace now, and we can keep it.” A flame lit in Dimitri’s eye. “As long as we crush evil where it lives and breeds. Starting tomorrow with these slitherers.”

“And we’ll get back home, become human again, and go back to chasing our crazy dreams.”

He laughed. “Goddess willing.”

“So, what do _you_ want?” Claude asked him. “I’ve done my fair share of pontificating; I figure you’ve earned your chance to unleash your inner windbag. C’mon, hit me with your best shot. Tell me what makes Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd get up in the morning.”

Dimitri thought for a moment, staring up silently at the ceiling. “Revenge,” he concluded, seeming almost embarrassed to voice such a thought. “I’m afraid I lack such a high-minded philosophy as yours, Claude. All I want is to root out the masterminds of the Tragedy of Duscur. The _true_ masterminds, the ones who engineered it, not a handful of hapless Duscurite pawns. The ones who killed my parents, my friends… I want their heads hanging on pikes at the gates of Fhirdiad. Yes… then we can have peace. When the dead at last have peace, and their spirits no longer cry for justice, I can have peace.”

He was more complex than he’d seemed at first glance, and yet with that admission, even his hidden dark side seemed so _simple._ He had one goal and a straight, clear path to it. Claude almost envied him. Set one’s sights low and one was never disappointed.

“Well, I hope you find those culprits soon. What are you gonna do after that, though?” he asked, though, expectantly. If Dimitri didn’t have any dreams beyond that, it would be a little sad.

“I haven’t given it much thought. I can’t really imagine life after it, but I think I would want to make life better for my subjects first and foremost. Life for many in the Kingdom is not as good as it could be. What do you think El dreams of?” Dimitri asked, his tone brightening a bit as he changed the subject. “What do you think she wants for the world?”

“Dunno. Maybe we’ll find out. At the moment, I’m sure her biggest goal involves destroying the slitherers.”

“Then we are in agreement there. What they have done to her is beyond the pale,” Dimitri said. “But beyond that… beyond tomorrow, I hope that whatever Edelgard wants, it’s something we can all agree on. I would like it if we could all work together to make Fódlan a better place.”

Claude grinned. “So what you’re saying is, I’ve brought you around to my way of thinking?”

“Now hold on, I said nothing of the—”

The door burst open and Annette charged through, eyes wide and wild, with a harried Marianne trailing behind her. _“Dimitri, Claude, there’s an ant in our room!”_ she blurted out, panting for breath as she slammed the door shut behind her. _“I tried to kill it but I think I just made it angrier and now it’s chasing me!”_

* * *

After a long day of tactical planning and training drills, Bernadetta had expected the images of Byleth’s infamous diagrams to haunt her for the rest of the night. But instead, she awoke from troubled dreams of an all too familiar sort—one of her father’s servants cruelly wrenching out her hair by the fistful as her father stood by and leered at her, snarling at her to be quiet and stop fighting and let him style her hair properly for tonight’s dinner with Marquise von Vestra—and at first wondered if everything else had been a dream, too. Then she realized that the room she was sleeping in was not her bedroom at Garreg Mach, nor was it her bedroom at Varley Manor. It was a room in the Donner Family Inn in Mousebrook, a tiny town made for mice, and she was a mouse. What reminded her most of all was the uniquely odd sensation of her tail slithering over her ankle.

And there was a short, fat stub of a candle as large to her as a tree stump resting on the floor, its charred wick alight with a swaying yellow flame almost as tall as she was. She’d forgotten to snuff it out before passing out.

She also noticed that the door was slowly creaking its way open, the hallway beyond as black as pitch. Stricken with terror, she drew her blankets over her head and burrowed into bed, trying to hide as much of herself as possible. Was it Yuri? Had he returned to finish the job? He’d come back to kill her, to paint the walls with her blood, and this time her father would not save her, neither for love nor to preserve her usefulness.

She took as deep a breath as she could and tried to calm herself. Could she scream? The inn was full of her fellow students, including Edelgard. There was also Byleth and Alois, both nice people who always helped her, and Catherine, who was scary but always stood up for justice.

Oh, but what if she screamed and they all slept through it? Or what if they were so annoyed at her for screaming that they refused to help out of spite? What if Edelgard was sick of running after her to protect her?

 _“Don’t come any closer,”_ she whispered under her breath as she heard the floorboards creak, as though it would help. _“Don’t come any closer, don’t come any closer, don’t come any closer…”_

_“Bernadetta? Are you awake?”_

Edelgard’s voice. It was Edelgard’s voice!

But no, Yuri could fake voices, too, and he did a really good job of it! And why would she think Edelgard would want to rush to her aid _again,_ anyway? She had to be sick and tired of running after her by now! Bernadetta tried to burrow deeper into the mattress. Maybe if she tried hard enough, she could dig her way right through it and the floor and tunnel her way to freedom…

A hand fell over her head, pressing through the thin sheets. _“Bernie…”_

She let out a panicked yelp and threw herself out of her burrow, fleeing the warmth of the bedsheets and pressing herself against the wall, her tiny heart fluttering, her tiny chest heaving.

Edelgard was standing over her, her white fur gleaming like fresh snowfall in the light from the candle. Yuri could fake voices, but nothing else. It was really her.

“S-Sorry, El,” Bernadetta mumbled, embarrassed. “I… I thought you were…”

Edelgard’s eyes softened with concern, her paw hovering over her shoulder. “Were you having a nightmare?”

“I was awake. I just thought you were Yuri.” In spite of herself, she yawned. “Is it time to go fight already?”

“No,” Edelgard said. She sat on the side of the bed. “It is simply that I… well, I can’t sleep.”

“Nightmares?”

She nodded. “Yes, I’ve been having nightmares. May I…”

She trailed off and fell silent, letting the beginning of an uncharacteristic plea hang in the air.

And she stayed silent, fidgeting anxiously with the tip of her tail.

“I… oh, this is embarrassing, but—I usually sleep with a stuffed bear,” Edelgard finally blurted out. “It… takes the edge off the night terrors. Bernie, if I could… May I rest at your side?”

“Y-You want to sleep with me?”

“Sleep? No, no, not _sleep._ Merely to rest here and… calm myself. We do not have to sleep.”

“Okay. That’s fine by me,” Bernadetta said, not sure if she could really say no. Besides, Edelgard was soft and warm, and the nights in Abyss were so cold…

She slipped back under the covers. So did Edelgard. Bernadetta felt Edelgard’s silky fur slip against hers and her whiskers tickle the nape of her neck. She felt an arm slither underneath her and wrap over her chest, clawed fingertips gently rake furrows in her fur, and the warmth of Edelgard’s chest pressing against her back bleed through her fur to warm her skin. Edelgard’s legs curled around hers and held her in place. Her breath hitched. A tingle ran up her spine—whether out of exhilaration, excitement, or anxiety, she couldn’t tell.

But the warmth was nice, though, and calming, just as it had been last night. It was a warmth she could get lost in; a warmth she could drown in, and soon enough, the anxiety drifted away on the gentle waves.

She was sharing a bed with a princess. A _real_ bed, not a lump of rags in an old dresser drawer. _She was sharing a bed with a princess!_ It was so romantic, so storybook, so _ridiculously_ storybook. And Edelgard wasn’t just _resting at her side,_ she was _snuggling_ her like she was a…

A stuffed bear.

Just like the one Edelgard apparently slept with.

Despite Bernadetta being a mouse, Edelgard had just _literally_ made her a Bernie-Bear. The thought was so funny that Bernadetta couldn’t help but laugh at it.

Edelgard shifted and let her arm drift away. “I’m sorry—did that tickle?”

“What? No, uh—no, you’re fine. I just—thought of something funny, that’s all.” Bernadetta curled up beside her. Edelgard’s heartbeat, steady and strong, pressed against her back. “Does this… usually happen?”

“Hmm?”

“Do you usually need to find someone to lie down with after a bad dream?” The question sounded stupid as soon as she asked it. Who in all Fódlan would _Edelgard,_ supreme among ice queens, go to for help with night terrors? Bernadetta could imagine a little girl begging her parents to let her sleep with them for the night after a bad dream (if only because she’d read about it in stories—heaven forbid she’d ever went to her father and mother about bad dreams, no matter how young she’d been!), but Edelgard was practically a grown woman! “Sorry, that was stupid. I-I didn’t mean to…”

Edelgard’s grip tightened. “What? I—er, n-no. I mean…” She let out a disarmed little laugh. “Usually I merely walk around to clear my mind, but I stopped by your room and I thought…”

Bernadetta felt Edelgard’s thumb run little circles in her side. “So… it was worse than usual?”

Edelgard nodded. “Dreams are where I remember it most clearly. The dungeon. The torture. Dreams are where my scars become fresh and the knives feel real. I remembered my worst day tonight. As the experiments ran their course, my older siblings went first, one by one, elder to younger,” Edelgard said, her voice growing raw and hoarse.

“I resented them at first; in my weaker moments, I even _hated_ them,” she continued. “They were older. They were stronger. They should have stayed to take care of us, but they left us behind instead… I thought I was next, but then I lost my younger brother and sister. We had never really been close, none of us, but in that dungeon, we became each others’ world. As our numbers dwindled, our worlds shrank and shrank… until my world was nothing but me. And then I, the eldest, the strongest, resented _myself_ for failing to follow my older siblings. I ran out of tears that day.”

“I can’t imagine watching ten siblings die,” Bernadetta mumbled, unsure of what to say. “I can’t even imagine having that many to begin with.” She fumbled under the sheets to find Edelgard’s other paw and gave it a comforting squeeze. Edelgard reciprocated, threading her fingers through Bernadetta’s. “How do you do it?”

“If you cannot imagine that, then I am glad for you. Perhaps it would be better if nobody could fathom such things.”

“No, no, I mean—s-sorry, that didn’t come out right.” Bernadetta tried to collect her thoughts. “I-I mean… you suffered so much. But you act like other people’s pain matters, too, even if it’s nowhere near as bad. I don’t understand how you can care about other people.”

“I understand.” Edelgard patted her on the head. “Despite the gulf between us, I can see that your suffering and mine flow from the same spring: an all-consuming greed that permeates the social order of this land. The root of this evil is the obsession that drives the noble class—an obsession with the so-called blessings of the Goddess. Crests are to blame for this brutal, irrational world.”

Bernadetta had never thought of that, but the more she thought about it, the more sense it made. Noble bloodlines were propagated by those bearing Crests—even a firstborn son wouldn’t gain his father’s inheritance if a younger brother or sister bore a Crest instead of him. It was because she herself had a Crest that her father had cared so much about how marriageable she was; if she hadn’t had one, he’d have put more effort into fathering another child than tormenting her. It wasn’t much to complain about compared to someone like Edelgard or Lysithea, but…

“It’s sad,” she said, “that we’d take the Goddess’ blessings and use them to hurt each other…”

“Crests give us great power,” Edelgard said, “and as a result, we ourselves are reduced to vessels for that power, to be used by others.” Her voice grew quieter and quieter until she was barely whispering. _“They_ made me to be a weapon for them, a weapon powered by the Crest they burned into my blood. The ultimate emperor, created to dominate Fódlan from its fangs to its throat… for _them._ But now…” She held her ragged cloak tighter, wrapping herself up in it as best she could while holding Bernadetta tighter. “They’ve thrown me away, just like the rest of my siblings. I knew the long, winding path I walked before, but now, a fog has descended and the path has vanished… Even once we’ve made it through this, I won’t know where my next step will have to take me, or where I _need_ it to take me.”

“But that just means you’re free now, aren’t you?” Bernadetta asked, holding her paw tighter. “If they’ve thrown you away, you’re free from them. J-Just like how here at Garreg Mach, I don’t have to worry about my father, because he’s thrown _me_ away, too. I still do, of course, b-but that’s just how Bernie works. But _you,_ El…”

Edelgard gently nuzzled her neck. Bernadetta felt Edelgard’s legs curl around her own and their tails slowly, unconsciously intertwine. “I wish it were that simple, Bernie. I should be happy to be free, and yet I feel such… turmoil. They were my enemy, but I _needed_ them. I needed their plan to change the world, and now…”

Bernadetta felt that she should hug Edelgard, so she rolled over and wrapped her arms around the princess in return, looking up into sad lavender eyes and seeing someone just as vulnerable as herself behind Edelgard’s stern stoicism and elegant rhetoric. Edelgard gripped her tighter, clung to her, let the tip of her snout rest in the nest of Bernadetta’s tangled mop of hair. Edelgard’s fur still smelled of lilac.

In the dim and flickering half-light cast by the candle, any strong face the princess might have worn was hidden, and Bernadetta could see her as she was on the inside—small, frightened, and wracked by horrible memories that would never leave her, just like herself. She could see the Edelgard who murmured in her sleep, calling out softly for salvation that never came; the Edelgard who twitched and shuddered and writhed as her past revisited her unconscious mind; the Edelgard who sometimes woke up screaming about rats, delirious in her fear and fatigue; the Edelgard whom nobody else ever saw. She, Bernadetta von Varley, a mere speck compared to her greatness, was privileged to see such vulnerability from her.

She almost wanted to pinch herself to see if she was really awake. Could it be possible? Did Edelgard really trust her _this_ much? Or was this just a dream?

“Those who slither in the dark wanted me to act on their behalf to take over the world for their own wicked ends,” Edelgard said, still clinging to her. “I was like a dog to them; they were content to let me snarl and bark and bare my fangs, but if I so much as nipped their hands, it would be the end for me, my father, and Adrestia itself. Hubert and I could only plot in secret to hijack their plans for conquest and turn them to our advantage to create a better future for humanity. At least… that was what I had thought. Now, down here, I realize that every time I spoke out of turn, I was inching one step closer to…” She lifted one arm and stared forlornly at her paw, its black-on-black silhouette nearly invisible in the darkness. _“This._ The thought is oddly humbling—I had always been under the delusion that I was indispensable.”

Bernadetta understood. She knew full well why Edelgard had formed an alliance with those horrible people after all they’d done to her. She’d had no choice—just like all the things Bernadetta had had no choice in. Edelgard’s uncle—or rather, her so-called uncle, the man who pretended to be Lord Volkhard von Arundel—was simply a worse version of Bernadetta’s father, and like Bernadetta’s father, he demanded from Edelgard her total compliance. But unlike Bernadetta with her father, Edelgard couldn’t scream and shout and stamp her feet and shut herself up in her bedroom until Arundel forgot about her and his cruel doting and ruthless demands cooled to indifferent neglect. Edelgard would be his Bernadetta, groomed for his purposes, or she would cease to be Edelgard. And that was why she was a mouse right now—because she had refused to be his Bernadetta any longer.

She nuzzled Edelgard’s neck. “It’s okay, El. You aren’t gonna be anyone’s Bernie anymore.”

Edelgard smiled and ran a paw down Bernadetta’s back. Bernadetta shivered—not from cold, but from feeling that soft weight ghost down her spine. To think that Edelgard of all people could be so gentle…

“That reminds me. Bernie… er, Bernadetta, it has just occurred to me that when you speak to yourself, you call yourself ‘Bernie.’ You always chastise and insult yourself—is that how your father speaks to you?”

“Um… yeah. Why?”

“Because if I am to allow you to call me ‘El,’ then I should call you a name you enjoy hearing.”

“Oh.” Bernadetta thought about it. Everyone just called her ‘Bernie,’ not just her father, and it was a common enough nickname. Dorothea had settled on ‘Bern,’ but whenever Edelgard called her _that,_ it felt as though she was commanding her to set herself on fire, so… “Bernie’s fine. The name sounds good when my friends say it.”

 _Friends._ She couldn’t believe she was calling someone like Edelgard her _friend._ What was she _saying?_ “I-I mean, if you really c-consider yourself to be—I wouldn’t want to be presumptuous and call you my friend if—oh, Bernie, just shut up now and stop spewing nonsense, at this rate you’ll never—”

The sharp, cold, ticklish sensation of Edelgard’s nose meeting hers shocked her out of her downward spiral.

“Presumptuous? You might be the only friend I have,” Edelgard told her.

“No way.”

“Name one other friend I have.”

“...Hubert?”

“Name two.”

Bernadetta laughed. “I can’t believe I have more friends than you!”

Edelgard’s face fell. “Oh, goodness. You _do_ have more friends than me! To be a princess dooms one to a lonely enough life as it is… and to be a weapon for conquest is an even lonelier one.”

“I mean, I didn’t make any friends until I was fifteen and I met…” Bernadetta started, but then she stopped when she realized who that ‘friend’ had been.

As though she’d sensed Bernadetta’s thoughts, Edelgard scratched her gently behind her ear to soothe her.

“Did you really only ever have two friends, though?” Bernadetta asked her.

“No, there was another, I think. When I lived in Faerghus, about ten years ago… the year I spent there before I was taken back to Enbarr and the experiments began, I met a boy about my age. I don’t recall much about him, not even his name—I don’t recall much of anything from before the dungeon, really—but… I think I enjoyed spending time with him.”

“If you ever meet him again, I hope it goes better than Yuri and me.”

“That would be nice. Perhaps I will make another friend once we are freed of these reprehensible slitherers and we return to the surface.”

“We’re going home,” Bernadetta sighed, a warm crimson flower blossoming in her chest as she thought about her room, all her stuffed pitcher plant dolls, the greenhouse, real food from the dining hall, warm sunlight… she’d even almost be happy to see another human classmate. She hadn’t even considered that this was the last leg of the journey. The concept just hadn’t seemed real until now. “I can’t believe it, El… we’re almost there!”

“It still feels so far away.” Edelgard sighed. “Since I was little and the Crest of Flames was seared into my blood, I’ve known what I would have to do—both what I would be forced to do, and what I would choose to do for myself. It has been so clear to me for all these years. But if we crush our enemies tomorrow, if I escape them, then the future will loom before me unknown and unknowable, a winding path bathed not in blood but in an abyssal darkness my eyes cannot penetrate. I’ll have to rethink my entire approach. The monument of such labor is… filling me with an odd sense of uncertainty.”

“Is that why you can’t sleep?”

“Well, I _did_ have a nightmare. But… yes.”

“Well… maybe you’ll find a better way now,” Bernadetta offered. She hadn’t thought about it at first, but if those who slither in the dark had wanted Edelgard to conquer Fódlan for them, then that meant her plan must have involved starting that war and using it to take power for herself! It was a gruesome image to let fill her mind—so much blood spilled, so much death and destruction… It would be no time for a recluse like her to live in, especially if Edelgard expected her to fight by her side! _“Please_ find a better way.”

Edelgard laughed. It wasn’t quite a happy laugh—it was bittersweet, tinged with melancholy. “Taking everything I know into account, I don’t know if there _is_ a better way. I’ve thought over and over about it. But I suppose I have no choice now. Or I suppose I have _every_ choice. It’s so strange not to know.”

“You’ll think of something. You’re _Edelgard.”_ Bernadetta let her head rest against Edelgard’s chest, letting the steady and soothing pulse of the princess’ strong heartbeat fill her ear. It was a strong heartbeat. She kept listening to the pulse as it slowed to a languid, soothing tempo; she and Edelgard laid together in silence. “So… if you’re feeling better, I guess you’ll want to go back to your own room…”

She tried to pull away and let Edelgard get up, but Edelgard just kept holding onto her. “Are you trying to kick me out?”

“No! No, of course not! I-I’m just saying, everyone needs a break from spending time with their friends every once in a while, a-and you must be getting bored of hugging me, so…”

“Is it so hard to believe that you make for good company?” Edelgard asked her.

“Yes.”

“But, er… actually, Bernie… there’s a… an ant in my room.”

Bernadetta felt her thoughts leave her brain for a second. “What.”

Edelgard gulped down a lump in her throat. Bernadetta heard her pulse quicken. “There is… an ant. An ant in my room.”

“O-One ant?”

“Yes. Yes, _one_ ant. And because we are mice, it is a _big_ ant,” she continued, flustered. “It is the proportionate size of a very big rat, or perhaps a very small dog. When I left, it had claimed one corner of the room for its own and I feared it may annex my bed next—Bernie, as your future emperor, I come to you for aid and ask you on bended knee—could you kill it for me?”

“Y-You want me to go to your room and kill an ant for you?”

“Yes, I _would_ like you to protect your liege and liberate her bedroom from this scourge. It’s, um, too big to step on, so you may have to get creative. Perhaps get your bow and shoot it to death.” Edelgard took a deep breath. “Or, barring that—because it _does_ strike me as a fearsome foe, and I do not wish to see you injured—I could stay here for the night, and neither of us need worry about it.”

Bernadetta began to giggle. She felt as though Edelgard might have just wanted to stay all along. Surely she had to have made that story up!

“I-It is not funny,” Edelgard insisted, putting a paw over her mouth to stop herself from laughing along. “You—Your future emperor’s life is in great peril from this dread beast; I e-expect you to lend me your aid!” she squeaked out. “Or… you may offer me asylum here, in your bed, which is quite warm and free from the horrible insect scourge that has made my room so perilous.”

“Okay, you can stay,” Bernadetta said, her cheeks hurting from smiling. She pulled away and began to slip out of bed. “You can have the bed. I’ll take the floor and—”

Edelgard grabbed her tightly by the arm. “No, no, that will not be necessary. I don’t mean to exile you from your bed again. Lie down. We can keep sharing.”

Bernadetta laid back down and curled up next to her. “Okay. Goodnight, El.”

“Goodnight, Bernie.”

Edelgard drifted to sleep next to her, and Bernadetta fell asleep soon afterward, wrapped in the princess’ embrace and watching the candle slowly burn itself out.

* * *

The dark tunnels of Abyss passed by with dull, silent monotony; the twisting passages were all alike in the way the vaulted ceilings vanished into darkness so completely that there might as well have been sky overhead. Hubert cursed the architect who had designed this hellish place. He cursed Garreg Mach. He cursed Seiros. More than that, he cursed Solon for having made this labyrinth so much more tedious to navigate.

“There is one thing I am not enjoying about being a mouse,” Petra said, trailing behind Dorothea like a shadow. The most strikingly unfamiliar thing about her current appearance was not that she was a mouse, but rather that her mane of brilliant magenta hair (more of a deep, dark, steely blue-gray to a mouse’s colorblind eyes) had fallen out of its intricate Brigid-style braid and simply trailed unadorned over her back and that the distinctive magenta tattoo that traced itself under her right eye was invisible beneath her fur (if it even still remained on her skin at all).

“There are a lot more things I’m not enjoying about it,” Dorothea sighed. Her fur was the same shade of lustrous, deep, oaken brown as her hair; a mane of wavy ringlets spilled over her shoulders. If not for the fur, ears, snout, and tail, she would have looked remarkably like her old self. That was the cruel magic of _polymorphus muridae—_ it left its victim with just enough traces of their former humanity to mock them.

“It is that we are not seeing colors as well anymore,” Petra said, “and Dorothea, that means I am not seeing your green eyes truthfully.”

“Oh, Petra…” Dorothea smiled wistfully at her. “I miss the color of your hair, too.”

Hubert nearly gagged on how saccharine their exchange was. How anybody could flirt at a time like this was beyond even his extensive imagination.

“I wanna go home,” Hilda whined, lagging behind the rest of her so-called ‘retainer squad’ while she fumbled with the little bits of thread she’d used to tie back her long pink hair into her usual pigtails. She was not exactly taking to being a mouse well, and that was the one and only thing Hubert couldn’t begrudge her for.

“What a unique and valuable insight,” he snapped at her. “Your brilliant mind never ceases to be an asset. Truly you are a force to be reckoned with among the Golden Deer. Whatever shall Claude do without you?”

“Everybody, stop,” Ferdinand announced, holding up one paw, his tail held high. If ever there was a man who took to being a rodent _well,_ on the other hand, it was him. He looked as much like his old self as a mouse could, with a crest of carrot-colored hair capping his head. The sharp snout and sandy fur suited him. He had always been an irritating little pest, after all. “Dorothea, set down the map again. We need to get a better sense of where we are.”

“Yes, Sir von Aegir,” Dorothea sighed, her voice sharp with a sardonic, yet weary edge. “Anything else I can do for you in the meantime, Ferdie? Fetch your tea, perhaps?”

She and Petra were carrying the rolled-up map under their arms like a rug, as in its current state it was roughly three or four times longer than either of them were tall. They set the map down on the ground and rolled it out as the rest of the squad came to a halt.

Ferdinand looked down at the map, scratching his whiskers. “Hmm… I would say we are about… _here,”_ he said, tapping on one part with his foot. “Or perhaps… here? Petra, did we take a right turn at the last T-junction, or a left? No— _two_ junctions back.”

Hubert kept going on ahead of them. “Enough of this. Every time we tarry, Solon scurries farther ahead of us. We shall not—”

His foot came down on something soft, sending a jolt of pain all the way up his spine and throwing him off his balance; he fell to the floor with a soft, all-too-embarrassing thud. He’d tripped over his own tail again. Accursed tail! How could anybody walk with one of those things slithering around behind them?

That made fourteen times now he had tripped over his tail since his unfortunate run-in with Solon had given it to him. He hoped nobody else but him had been counting.

“This is the fourteenth time now,” Dedue told him, kneeling at his side and offering a very large paw to help him up, though Hubert didn’t take it. A faint flicker of a wistful smile briefly replaced his omnipresent stern facade. “You are not unlike His Highness. I must always ask him not to push himself so hard and remind him to rest.”

“Hmph.” Hubert pulled himself back up onto his feet himself. Tail be damned, fur be damned, missing six feet of his original height be damned, he wouldn’t let anything slow him down. “If you truly cared about your prince as much as I do about Lady Edelgard, you would understand—”

As soon as he stood up, his knees buckled and he hit the floor yet again.

“If this map is correct, there is another Agarthan mouse battalion straight ahead,” Ferdinand said. “I fear we are not in any position to break through their ranks.”

“And if Hubie keeps tripping over his tail, we won’t have much luck sneaking around them, either,” Dorothea said. “Dedue’s right. We’ve got to rest for the night, or at least a few hours.”

Hubert bit his tongue and clenched his fist. The indignity of it all! Solon would die for this!

“We are needing food as well,” Petra added, laying a paw on her stomach. “What is it you are saying? An army is trampling its stomach?”

“Have you all forgotten the seriousness of the situation?” Hubert asked the others, incredulous. The anger in his blood helped propel him back onto his feet. “These dastards plan to replace Lady Edelgard with a phantom doppelganger and wrest control of the Empire. Do not think they will stop at that, especially if the Riegan and Blaiddyd brats fall into their wretched paws as well. How can you stand here talking of food and rest when we are on the eve of Fódlan’s destruction?”

Ferdinand sighed. “Hubert, forgive me for what I am about to do,” he said, stepping off the map. He walked up to Hubert, placed his paw on his chest, and with a deceptively gentle shove, knocked him back onto the floor.

Infuriated by this show of blatant disrespect, Hubert pulled himself up—or, at least, _tried_ to. This time, his legs barely moved. He simply couldn’t will the strength into them to force them back into service. He glared impotently up at Ferdinand, hoping looks could kill.

“Is it worse to arrive too late,” Ferdinand asked him, “or to perish on the way and not arrive at all? Hubert, I know you have been burning the candle at both ends. I suspect you have hardly slept or eaten these past few days, and hardly drank apart from coffee and alcohol. If you do not start taking care of yourself, I can assure you that you _will_ fail Lady Edelgard!”

“Excuse me?”

“It is as though you are trying to run a race with a broken leg,” he went on, “except the leg is your body and mind! Pushing yourself like this will only slow us down further. I admire you for trying to lead us in these trying times, but you are no longer in any position to do so. We are going to stay here and you are going to rest. Perhaps I do not know Lady Edelgard as well as you do—”

“Correct—”

“But I am positive that were she here right now, she would tell you the same thing.”

“How presumptuous of you to put your words in her mouth,” Hubert spat.

“Then imagine for yourself what she’d say to you down here,” Dorothea chimed in. She let out a derisive laugh. “Come on, Hubie. Is Edie _really_ the kind of girl who’ll wail and scream and cry, ‘Oh, woe is me! Save me, save me!’ like some storybook princess while waiting for some hero to sweep her off her feet and rescue her?”

For once, Hubert found himself at a loss for words. This whole time, he realized, he had been reliving those three years when Edelgard had languished in the dungeons, remembering with vivid horror the first time he had laid eyes on her after her release and had beheld the shock of ragged white hair that had once been such a glossy chestnut brown, the way clothes that had once been tailored to her had hung from her emaciated frame, the scars on her arms, the hollow and haunted look in her eyes.

But that was not the Edelgard of today. She had grown so strong since then—in spite of, not because, of the experiments the Agarthans had conducted to make her their ultimate weapon. Edelgard was strong and fierce, with a mind and will that could never be broken, no matter what she was reduced to. He felt ashamed of himself for wallowing in such morbid nostalgia. He had disgraced Edelgard with his behavior.

Who knew what torment and horrors she was undergoing down in this subterranean hell? All he could know for certain was that she would weather them with characteristic grace and strength. _That_ was the Edelgard of today.

* * *

He wasn't sure when or how he had fallen asleep, but he woke up to the crackling and spitting of a small fire and a dry, bitter taste in his mouth.

Petra crouched in front of him, holding in her paws a disconcertingly large insect: a beetle roughly the proportionate size of a chicken, its carapace charred and blackened.

“No happy hunting, I take it,” he rasped, his voice hoarse, as he looked down upon the offering.

“On some islands in Brigid,” she said to him, “insects are fried in oil and eaten with wild rice when the hunting is not good. I am finding no rice down here, unfortunately. We are having no spices down here either, so the taste will be plain.”

Hubert took the beetle from her. At its relatively colossal size, it more resembled a giant crab or lobster than an insect, and perhaps that fleeting familiarity was why his stomach growled so much in anticipation. He wasn’t one for seafood, but at least imagining it as such made it easier to trick himself into thinking it would be edible.

“She is right,” Ferdinand told him, nibbling with great reluctance on the charred remains of a spider. “The taste _is_ plain. The texture and… general experience is far less appealing, though.”

“I don’t think you’re supposed to eat the shell, Ferdinand,” Hilda said.

“You know, considering you nobles can afford any food you like,” Dorothea said to him, picking a segmented leg out of her teeth, “you lot aren’t adventurous at all. Sure, the taste isn’t good, but it’s all the same once it gets into your stomach, right? Just enjoy the novelty of the experience.”

That was exactly what Dorothea always said about her cooking (students and faculty tried to avoid the dining hall if possible whenever she was on duty to assist the cooks). Not exactly heartened, Hubert raised the insect to his mouth and dug in, the carapace cracking and snapping under his teeth to reveal surprisingly tender, albeit flavorless meat within. Eating it was like forcing paste down his throat, buh his stomach was so desperate for something to fill it that no amount of conscious revulsion could stop him from eating as much as he could. At first, the newfound weight in his stomach was so unfamiliar and alien that it hurt, but the more he ate, the more revitalized he felt.

“It could use some melted butter,” he said, wiping a few bits of shell from his mouth and setting the nearly-empty carapace aside. He could only hope that whatever hell Edelgard was living through, she was at least enjoying better fare than this. “Shall we depart now?”

“That depends,” Ferdinand said. “Shall you walk?”

Hubert struggled to his feet. His legs were numb, a warm wave of pins and needles still prickling his flesh. “I shall,” he said in defiance of his body.

“You shall not. You should be resting the night,” Petra said, catching and steadying him before he could fall face-first into the bonfire.

“Careful, Petra, I think Hubie’s still cranky,” Dorothea said. “Maybe he needs a scratch behind his ears or a tummy rub.”

“Cease your prattle,” he snapped at her. “Though I suppose I must rest,” he sighed, relenting and lowering himself back to the cold stone floor. The reality of his body—not simply that he was a mouse, but that he was tired, feeble, all but starved (until now), and unable to push himself any further.

“Is it true, Hubert?” Ferdinand asked.

“Is what true?”

“What Solon said about you—that when you were ten years old, you ran away from home for Lady Edelgard. Were you truly pursuing her for three days?”

Hubert nodded. “Three days until my detestable father’s men caught up to me and dragged me back to his estate. After that, I neither saw nor heard from Lady Edelgard for years. During that time, those who slither in the dark did unspeakable things to her.”

“I’m so sorry,” Dorothea said, fixing her gaze glumly at the floor.

“I see,” Ferdinand said. “So that is how deep your devotion goes.”

“Sad, yet admirable,” Dedue said, laconic as always. “I understand.”

“I’ll say,” Hilda said. “So you pretty much grew up right then and there and haven’t changed a bit since then, huh?”

Hubert scowled at her; she simply rolled her eyes and giggled. Being a mouse, it seemed, had reduced his ability to intimidate people to a tenth of what it had been, perhaps less. It was the teeth, he figured. Nobody could be sinister with such oversized incisors.

“Hubert, I do admire your devotion to Lady Edelgard, as much as you… constantly irritate me,” Ferdinand said. “I know you do not believe me when I say it, but I can only hope that someday I will prove as valuable to her as you.”

“Is that what you call your seditious prattling?” Hubert responded. “If that is devotion, you have an odd way of showing it.”

“Seditious? By no means! When my father steps down and I become prime minister, I wish to re-establish the cordial relationship the Aegir and Hresvelg lines have had for the past thousand years, just as you wish to repair the damage your father has done to the Vestra name.” Ferdinand smiled. “An advisor is useless if he cannot offer guidance, is he not? And what guidance will I be fit to offer her if I am her inferior in every way?”

This would normally be the point at which Hubert would call him a fool, an idiot, or a simpleton, or string together some far more eloquent expression of his loathing, but as he tried to collect his vocabulary, he found that after the events of the past day, his heart simply wasn’t in it. Headstrong, presumptuous, blathering moron as he was, Ferdinand only wished to help in his own way.

And even if it was a stupid way, Hubert had to admit that _his_ way, in comparison, had not achieved much better results in this situation.

“If there is one respect in which you may be superior to Her Highness,” he told Ferdinand, “it is your relentless positivity.”

Ferdinand let out a disarmed and uncomfortable laugh, his eyes roving away from Hubert. “Ah… er, Hubert, that almost sounded like a compliment. Are you alright?”

“Is the beetle meat making you sick?” Petra asked, kneeling at his side and trying to put a paw to his forehead to gauge his temperature.

Hubert chuckled and batted her paw away. “Rest assured, Ferdinand, I have no intention of lifting your spirits. I am speaking objectively; you have a habit of expecting things to turn out well for you. Perhaps that will serve us well down here.”

Dorothea looked to the others. “Guys, we just broke Hubert. Edie’s gonna _kill_ us.”

“It is an idle hypothesis,” he went on, lying down on his side and closing his eyes, “and I fully expect to be proven wrong once I wake up. Do try your best.”

Edelgard was not an impatient person; she would understand if he had to rest to regain his strength. And she was a survivor through and through—he had to trust her to survive a little longer. Though the visions flitting through his mind’s eye showed faded scars becoming fresh, skin splitting open to reveal canyons of flesh down to the bone, rivers of blood, flesh gnawed on by rats, the snap of a steel trap against a fragile mousy neck, an ignoble death by morsel of bread doused in rat poison… he had to force those ugly thoughts aside and trust Edelgard to survive.

* * *

Marking the eve of another fruitless day of searching, the sun vanished under the steepled spires of Garreg Mach and descended far beyond the mountains, ushering in a dark and starlit sky. The monastery grounds were lit only by lantern light. Though the autumn wind blowing from the north was cold, the tension in the air even now with the rising of the moon was hot as dragons’ breath. Seteth waited with Rhea at the hidden entrance to Abyss that had been found near the training ground, the two of them flanking a cage placed at the gaping hole in the ground that had been filled with howling, yowling, hungry monastery cats.

“No word from the other entrances,” he told Rhea. “The students haven’t been found yet.”

Flayn stood beside him, wracked with worry, anxiously curling a ribbon of her thick emerald hair around one finger. “Oh, dear… poor Bernadetta. Poor Edelgard. Poor Claude, Dimitri, and everyone. I do hope they are found soon…”

Rhea’s eyes still had a cold, hard glint in them. Her old self, the vengeful survivor, was still fully in control over the warm, matronly persona she wore of the Archbishop. Her restrained, silent fury boiled the air around her, like an oven with its door open. “As soon as they are found,” she reminded Seteth, “go to the other entrances and tell them to release the cats.”

Cyril, manning the cage with an iron pole in his hand to unlatch its door as soon as the signal was given, nodded grimly and rubbed at his eyes. The poor boy was utterly devoted to Rhea. He’d walk on hot coals for her. He’d spent the past two days frantically herding cats for her and still had the livid scratches on his arms as a badge of his service, wearing them as proudly as a knight would wear the Crest of Seiros on their armor; there was no doubt he’d spend all night standing out here if Rhea commanded it. “On your command, Lady Rhea.”

“Seteth, Flayn, check the other entrances again,” she said.

“Lady Rhea, if the students have been found, whoever found them shall come to _us,”_ Seteth argued. “I know you are impatient, but—”

She continued to stare into the darkness. A bead of sweat trickled down her brow and traced the noble arc of her nose. She swatted away a bug that had lighted on her neck. “Check them again.”

Seteth shook his head. There was no arguing with Saint Seiros. Nor was there any arguing with Archbishop Rhea, but he found it was still easier to do so with the latter than the former. “Yes, Lady Rhea.”

He began to walk away, if only to assuage Rhea’s temper. He knew full well the trauma she was reliving right now, the trauma _he_ was reliving right now, knowing that their ancient enemies, the ones who had butchered their people and painted Zanado red with their blood, were slithering in the dark beneath their very feet. He was on edge as well. He was trying to be the voice of reason, as he always tried to be, but it had never been harder before than it was right now. His heart burned cold; his blood curdled; his head pounded, brain throbbing against the inside of his skull. He knew how impatient she was, desperate to receive the all-clear to strike and erase the Agarthans from this world for good, because he too felt that lingering impatience crawling through his mind like an itch that couldn’t be scratched.

“Brother, shall we really walk around the whole monastery once more?” Flayn asked him, fatigue lacing her voice. This would have been their second orbit today; these human bodies she and Seteth wore were still shockingly frail, even after one thousand years to grow accustomed to them. He was no soldier, not anymore; she was even less of one.

He waited until Rhea was out of earshot. “No, we are returning to my quarters. I shall play some songs on the piano to pass the time and take our minds off this… incident. It will all turn out fine. I assure you.”

Even that wasn’t enough to light up Flayn’s weary face. He couldn’t blame her. “Brother,” she asked, “have you seen Professor Byleth around today?”

“Worry not about her,” he assured her, clasping her soft, small, vulnerable hand. “She can take care of herself.”

“Surely she must have gone down to look for her students,” she said. “She cares for them as though they were family. What if she has fallen victim to those fiends’ poison?”

A terrible thought occurred to Seteth. Rhea was preoccupied with getting the students back safely, but Byleth, for _once_ in the past six months, didn’t seem to be in her thoughts. If the students made it out before a hypothetical missing professor did, she would be caught in the feline plague she was about to unleash.

“Professor Byleth is probably fine,” he assured Flayn once more, as little as he believed it himself. He wished Flayn hadn’t become so obsessed with Byleth and her Black Eagles; it was so much more tiresome to keep her under his eye now that she was taking every opportunity to slip out and fraternize with her ‘future classmates.’ “I am sure she is obeying the shelter-in-place order I have put forth for all students and faculty. If it makes you feel any better, we shall stop by Jeralt’s office and ask him. Surely he knows exactly where his daughter is right now.”

Flayn nodded. “I do hope so.”

Before they could take another step, a shocked, panicked outcry rang through the cool evening air. Seteth whirled around to face it and found Cyril running at him at top speed, looking for all the world like he was about to tackle him and drag him down to the ground.

Instead, Cyril skidded to a halt in front of him, panting for breath. Seteth took the boy by the shoulder. “What is it?” he asked him. “What is wrong?”

 _“Brother, look!”_ Flayn shrieked, an accusatory index finger lancing out to point at Rhea.

Or, rather, the rapidly-descending empty pile of robes and ornamental headwear collapsing in a heap to the grass.

Seteth tore across the monastery grounds, lungs burning in his chest, heart pounding against his ribs, veins afire. _“Lady Rhea!”_

“I dunno what happened,” Cyril blurted out, struggling to keep up. “She got all pale and sweaty all of a sudden and then she started convulsing and told me to run and get help—”

The three of them came to a halt at the pool of cloth and gold lying on the grass. His heart pumping, Seteth very, _very_ gently nudged the robes with the toe of his boot. Flayn clasped his hand tightly enough that he felt his bones creak.

“Has she, um… ascended to heaven, or something like that?” Cyril asked, his tan skin ashen, sweat dotting his brow. “Is she…”

There was a clang of metal on metal; Seteth glanced in its direction and saw the door of the cage swinging open. Sitting in the grass was a fat little orange-and-white cat, its rump and tail raised, its hindquarters subtly wiggling in the air, its ears pinned back and the pupils of its eyes widening from narrow slits to deep black orbs.

He looked back down and saw a tiny whisker-capped snout poke its way out from under the Archbishop’s robes, followed by a very mousy little head covered in fur the same pale green color as fresh mint leaves, followed by a very mousy little body with little pale pink paws and a long pale pink tail.

 _“L-Lady Rhea?”_ Flayn whispered, uttering the one thought Seteth himself was struggling to bring himself to think.

The cat pounced; the mouse darted into the grass; Seteth found himself, Flayn, and Cyril chasing the both of them across the monastery grounds.

 _“Goddess forgive me,”_ he gasped, panting for breath, his lungs filled with fire, as he drew back his leg and aimed it squarely for the cat’s ample stomach. He knew what he was doing was despicable, but he would do anything to protect Rhea.

 _“Brother, no!”_ Flayn wailed.

With a miserable and soul-crushing yelp that struck Seteth to the bone, the poor cat veered off course and scurried away, no longer keen on catching its prey. Seteth dived to the ground and felt his fingers curl around the mouse before it could travel much farther, the impact of his chest against the ground knocking the wind out of him. Silky fur brushed against his skin and sharp claws dug into his palm as the mouse struggled against his grip.

He pulled himself up and clutched the mouse to his chest, cupping both hands around it and whispering his most sincere, dearest apologies for what he had just done.

“D-Did you get her?” Cyril panted, mopping sweat from his brow with his sleeve.

Seteth pulled his hand back and cradled the Archbishop in his palm. She was completely still now, save for the rapid rise and fall of her chest.

He did not often use the term ‘nightmare scenario,’ but if ever it was appropriate, it was now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 


	10. Three Mouses, Part One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Putting their plan into motion, Edelgard, Claude, and Dimitri lead their classmates and the Ashen Wolves in an unorthodox assault on Those Who Slither in the Dark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Time for an action-packed chapter! To get you into the mood for the back half, [here's](https://youtu.be/ilMYxdxhPk0) what I was listening to while writing it.
> 
> Also, time for an art dump!
> 
> Here's Edelgard helping Bernie keep her cool in battle, courtesy of [@RecurrentArt](https://twitter.com/RecurrentArt/status/1252649181883203584):  
> 
> 
> And here's Edelgard and Bernie cuddling, courtesy of [@Sympolite](https://twitter.com/sympolite/status/1251264443465568257):  
> 
> 
> Thanks for reading!

The dungeons beneath the Imperial Palace in Enbarr had never been meant to hold children, and yet they had held Edelgard and her siblings for about two years. Each cell, meant for one man, could hold two of the older children and up to three of the younger ones. Edelgard had been one of the younger ones.

Their cellmates had rotated: after every session in the torture chamber Thales had repurposed into a laboratory, each child had been sequestered in a different cell with different cellmates. Sometimes Edelgard had found herself sharing a cell with Burkhart or Gerlinde, the eldest twins; or Pascal and Hedwig—the youngest ones—Hedwig so young that it had taken her longer than the others to fully realize what was going on, Pascal too sensitive and kindhearted to tell her; sometimes she’d shared a cell with Immanuel, who had screamed the loudest, or Justine, who had kicked and spat at the guards when no one else had had the courage; Joachim, who had always begged to be chosen for the experiments before anyone else; Dagmar, the sickly one who had prayed to the Goddess every night to no avail (Edelgard herself had given up on prayer a few months in, and from that day onward, she had never believed in the Goddess); Heidemarie, who had always begged and pleaded to her captors to release her; or Anselm, the closest to Edelgard in age, who’d screamed his hatred of her uncle Arundel and their father to the bitter end.

After several months of mutilation and vivisection, Burkhart and Gerlinde had been the first to die. One night, Burkhart was returned to his cell paralyzed from the neck down and barely able to breathe; his body carried out the next morning, already frozen in rigor mortis. The next day, Gerlinde was taken back to the laboratory, though the wounds on her body were so fresh they were still oozing blood and pus, and never returned; the guards informed the rest of the children that she had perished during surgery.

Months later, Immanuel’s screams gradually faded over the course of a day until he’d never made another sound; Justine violently struck unconscious by a guard for daring to bite his hand, nearly severing his finger, and the next day Thales took great pleasure in telling the remaining children that the concussion she had received had directly led to her perishing on the operating table.

Joachim eventually became horribly ill from the experiments, his skin covered in weeping sores, and was removed (likely euthanized) lest he infect the remaining children. Dagmar died of fever, barely able to speak a coherent sentence as Edelgard mopped the sweat from her brow and kept away the rats that smelled defenseless meat. Heidemarie suffered thirty-seven attempts to imbue her with even a single Crest, let alone two, until her bones had become as brittle as fine ceramics and her body all but fell apart; she died coughing and vomiting blood.

Just over a year into their captivity, Anselm tried to escape the dungeon, dragging Edelgard behind him against her will, despite her protests. The attempt was neatly and easily foiled by the guards. The next day, he was dragged out of his cell, ragged graying hair stained with day-old blood, leg and arm broken beyond repair, eyes so swollen shut that he was blind. He never returned.

That left Edelgard the eldest of the three remaining; a responsibility and burden she was not fit to bear. One night, late into the second year of their imprisonment, Edelgard had fallen asleep clinging to Pascal for warmth and hoping to be the next to die; she woke up in the morning with a corpse’s frozen arms locked around her waist. Soon after, Hedwig contracted a severe fever that burned her mind away and left her an empty husk who would look at Edelgard and only see a stranger; the fever took her too, eventually, and she died too addled to even realize she was dying.

Edelgard spent the next few months—the _last_ few months—alone in her cell as the experiments reached their bloody climax, her life a whirlwind of fear and pain with no respite. Against all odds, over the years in the dungeon, her body had never been paralyzed, her limbs never broken beyond repair; her fevers had never hollowed out her skull, her illnesses had never become terminal, her mind had not been reduced to that of an infant, and she had not gone mad from the pain; the knives plunging into her body again and again had never slipped and bled her to death. Against all odds, against any conceivable sense of cosmic justice, she alone survived to bear the fruits of the Agarthans’ terrible science.

Ten siblings, eight older, two younger. It was only in her dreams that Edelgard could fully recall their faces, their voices, the sounds of their cries and screams. The days before then, though—days of laughter, of sunlight, of frustration and petty fighting and teasing—even in dreams, that part of her past was all but lost. Edelgard’s memories of life before the two years of constant surgical invasion that had whitened her hair and burned the legacy of Nemesis and the hopes and dreams of the Agarthans into her blood were so hazy, so faint, so difficult to fully recall that it was almost as though she had been born in those dungeons. At the very least, the little girl she had been had died down there—in a way, none of the Hresvelg children had survived.

Soon, when she was emperor, she would have only one body in that dungeon, and it would be Thales’; and when he had been entombed there, she would have each and every cell, the dark corridors, and the operating room filled in with concrete. When she was emperor, when she wore her father’s crown, she would prove to her family that she had earned the privilege of her inexplicable survival.

She fell asleep clinging to Bernadetta for warmth; that morning, when she awoke, not a corpse’s statuesque rigor and glacial vise grip but a soft, warm, and yielding embrace greeted her. Her concrete memories of her time in the dungeons always faded to vague impressions upon waking; she knew the events, but only in broad strokes, and most details eluded her. And so when she woke up with Bernadetta still by her side, she couldn’t quite call to mind _exactly_ why that warmth was so relieving—just that it _was._

Bernadetta lifted her head, her gray eyes warmer and brighter than Edelgard had ever seen them before. “El? Good morning, I think,” she said, yawning. “How’d you sleep? It wasn’t distracting having me here, was it?”

Edelgard found herself at a loss for words.

Bernadetta let go of her. “If I—You couldn’t sleep with me hugging you so tightly, could you? Oh, Bernie, great going; now Edelgard’s gonna be tired during the battle, a-and it’s all gonna be your fault, you stupid—”

Edelgard grabbed her before she could slip away. “No, it’s fine. Stay just a bit longer.”

Someone knocked on the door.

“Just a bit longer,” she repeated, holding Bernadetta closer, basking in the warmth and softness and gentle lilac scent of her fur. She had a battle to fight, but for now, she simply wished to indulge in a warmth that would not be taken from her.

* * *

Lysithea was roused by her sleep in the morning by an incredible aroma—something so sweet and heady and heavenly that at first she thought she had died in her sleep and gone to heaven. But then she woke up, pulled the covers down from over her head, blinked blearily at the dull torchlight shining in through the window of her bedroom, slipped out of bed and set her bare feet on the wood floor, and remembered by the shocking sensation of her tail slithering along behind her that she was a mouse.

She sniffed the air again, her stomach churned and let out a needy growl, and any existential crisis she might have had over remembering that she was a mouse was neatly headed off.

On her way out, she looked to the other bed, messy and unmade. Catherine had insisted on being her roommate; in fact, ever since that annoying little pest Linhardt had let slip about her Crests, Catherine had been following her _everywhere,_ though she didn’t have any places to go. As if she needed a babysitter!

She hurriedly applied her robes and followed the aroma out of the room and into the hall, enticed and wracked with worsening hunger pangs the stronger it became. She needed food, and the sweeter the better!

As she came closer, it wasn’t just the smell that got stronger, but the sound of voices. She crept down the stairs and soon enough found herself standing over the threshold of the kitchen.

She hit something soft with incredible force and staggered backward. Her eyes stung, her nose wrinkling and twitching, as a cloud of flour engulfed her head, clinging to her already-white fur; she sneezed into the crook of her elbow.

“Oops! I’m so sorry, Lysithea!” Annette chirped, hastily scooping a half-full bag of flour nearly the size of her head off the floor. Her paws and fur were glazed white as though she’d been covered in a thin layer of rime. “Are you okay?”

Lysithea rubbed the flour out of her eyes and shook it out of her fur. “Yes. Yes, I think I’m fine. What’s going on?”

“Breakfast is going on, of course!” Annette grinned. “Constance and I have been up all morning making scones! Or, well, _I’ve_ been making them; she’s been more of a supervisor and a bit of a sous-chef—”

 _“Come here at once, Annette!”_ Constance’s lyrical voice rang out. She knelt beside the oven, thick mitts covering her paws. _“I believe the next batch is ready!”_

“Right away, ma’am!” Annette squeaked, turning tail and rushing to her side to attend to her pastries.

Before Lysithea could fully process what she was seeing, she felt a firm paw fall on her shoulder so weightily that it almost dislocated it, or so it felt. “Hey, roomie!” Catherine said, patting her shoulder. “How’d you sleep?”

“Um… f-fine, of course,” Lysithea said, pulling away. Catherine didn’t have to know about the nightmares. She knew enough already. _More_ than enough. _Too_ much. She didn’t have to know about the experiments, about sleeping with four siblings and waking up with three and a corpse, about the horror in her parents’ eyes as they beheld their only remaining daughter’s shock of snow-white hair…

“I’d considered waking you up with me, but I’d heard you tossing and turning a bit last night, so I figured you might like to sleep a little while longer.” Catherine forced a scone into her paw. “Now let’s get some food in you—Can’t fight on an empty stomach, after all!”

Lysithea didn’t need to be told twice. She all but stuffed the pastry wedge into her mouth, reveling in the flaky, moist, crumbly texture; the sweetness of the icing; the delicious chewy texture and tart flavor of the little chunks of dried fruit dotting the dough. It was good enough to bring tears to her eyes.

“Another amazing batch!” Constance crowed as she and Annette produced another tray of fresh scones from the oven and set it down to cool. “Miss Annette, you are an absolutely incredible baker! When I restore House Nuvelle to its former glory, I _insist_ that you be the head chef!”

Annette might have blushed underneath her fur. “O-Oh, well, if you think _this_ is good, I can’t wait for you to try my friend Mercie’s stuff! She makes my baking look pretty pedestrian…”

Constance gasped. “‘Mercie?’ As in _Mercedes von Martritz?”_

“You _know_ Mercie?”

 _“Know_ her? We were simply inseparable when we were children! How do _you_ know her? How is she faring?”

“Well, we went to the Royal Academy of Sorcery together, and now we’re both here at Garreg Mach…”

“Oh, splendid!” Constance clapped her paws. “When all this is behind us, I _must_ pay her a visit! To think that she has been here all this time…”

While Annette and Constance caught up with each other, Lysithea kept eating her scone. It was _so_ good.

“Good, isn’t it?” Catherine said to her, smiling. “Don’t ask me how they pulled it off. Where in creation would they have gotten eggs or buttermilk down _here?”_

Lysithea couldn’t help but wonder the same question. A single chicken’s egg would probably be as tall as her, and even a quail’s egg would be sizable at her current scale. And where would milk come from down here? Was it rat’s milk? Oh, Goddess, she hoped it wasn’t rat’s milk.

She made to set the scone down, then thought better of it and decided to keep eating. So what if it was quail eggs and rat milk? It tasted divine, anyway.

“I’m sure Miss Annette and her sous-chef had no trouble getting the ingredients for such an _eggs-_ cellent treat,” Alois chimed in, stuffing a few wedges of pastry into a pouch slung over his shoulder. “There. I think we’re all set for our expedition. Matthias, how’s the map coming along?”

Matthias all but leaped up from the dining room table, a scroll of paper clutched in one paw. “Got it! Follow this route exactly as I marked it,” he said, shoving the map into Alois’ paw, “and you’ll get back to the monastery in no time!”

Lysithea recalled that part of the plan Byleth and the lords had workshopped last night. Catherine and Alois were to retrace Claude and Dimitri’s path in reverse back to the surface, alert the rest of the Knights of Seiros, and have them gather at the southern entrance to Abyss in the Sealed Forest to cut off any escape route for the slitherers, raiders, chuds, or whatever they called themselves.

She felt her paw curl into a fist, claws biting into her palm. She’d begun to have her suspicions at the sight of Tomas’ corpse-pale flesh beneath his disguise, but meeting the mousy mages wearing black robes and beaked facemasks had confirmed it—these slitherers were the same people who had conducted their experiments on the children of House Ordelia; Lysithea herself must have been, she supposed, nothing but a trial run for what they had later done to Edelgard. A failed prototype.

Today, she would have her revenge. For her brothers and sisters, for her parents… she would bring that chapter of her life to a close so she could use what little time she had left to make sure what was left of her family would be well taken care of in her absence.

“Hey, kiddo.” Catherine tapped her on the shoulder, speaking in a low voice.

“E-Excuse me?” Lysithea mumbled, choking down her last mouthful of scone.

“So, about your Crest of Charon…”

The sweet taste of the mushy scone lying in her mouth turned bitter. She gulped it down. “What about it,” she spat.

“Oh, it’s just that I always knew we’d had something in common,” Catherine said, smiling, though there was an infuriatingly pitying look in her eyes. “Sort of an intuition, you could say. Like I could smell the Crest on you.”

“Excuse me,” Lysithea said brusquely, brushing her paw aside and heading over to the table where more of those wonderful scones awaited.

Unfortunately, Catherine followed her. “I know whatever these dastards did to give you that Crest must have hurt—”

“No, you have no idea,” Lysithea shot back. “I don’t want to talk about my Crests with you, _ma’am.”_ She spat out the honorific like it was meant as an insult.

“It’s a mockery of the Goddess’ providence, what they did to you. If there’s anything I can do to help you bring them to justice…”

Lysithea sat at the table—as far away from Linhardt as possible, of course—and set to work munching on another scone. Dimitri was sitting next to her, which was fine—sure, he was imposing, but at least he didn’t constantly tease her like Claude did.

Unfortunately, there was an empty chair right across from her, next to Professor Byleth. Catherine took it, ensuring that Lysithea remained trapped in this conversation. “… Ever thought about training in swordsmanship?”

“No,” Lysithea scoffed, as though it were obvious that she hadn’t. “I lack the upper body strength for it.”

“You’d be surprised what you can gain with a bit of training,” Catherine said. “Isn’t that right, Professor?” she asked, nudging Byleth in the side.

Byleth brushed some errant crumbs off her snout. “Mmhmm,” she grunted, her mouth still full. She swallowed. “Linhardt didn’t think he had the aptitude for horseback riding, but he’s been doing quite well so far.”

Linhardt piped up. “Er, actually, about that, Professor… can we talk?”

“And besides,” Lysithea added, “I would much rather focus on honing my mind. Muscles aren’t of much use to me.”

“I’m just saying,” Catherine said to her, “it doesn’t hurt to be well-rounded.”

Caspar leaped to his feet. “Are you offering Lysithea swordsmanship lessons, Lady Catherine?!” he exclaimed. “I want in! _Please!_ Even if I can’t wield Thunderbrand, I’ll make you proud, I swear!”

“Careful,” Claude said to Catherine, leaning forward and rakishly running a paw through his tangled rat’s-nest of black hair. “If you knew what this girl was capable of with magic alone, you wouldn’t want to put a sword in her hand.”

“I’m not interested, anyway,” Lysithea said to her flatly.

Catherine hid her disappointment with a self-effacing smirk. “Alright. I’ll be around if you change your mind. Professor Manuela teaches the Golden Deer, right? Talk to her about the certification process for a mortal savant. I think you’d make a good one. And if there’s ever anything I can help you with, you let me know.”

“I will,” Lysithea said. She wouldn’t.

Matthias came up to the table. “Er, excuse me, everyone—I’ve asked some of you before, but have any of you seen my robes? I think I misplaced them after yesterday’s bath, and I know clothes aren’t really a big deal for us mice since we’ve got all this fur, but since _you’re_ all dressed to the nines I kinda wanted to fit in—”

Constance nudged him aside and gently lowered another rack of warm scones onto the table. “Oh, those ratty little robes? I threw them out for you. You’re welcome!”

“Oh, uh… well, I suppose they were a little past their prime,” Matthias admitted, taken aback. “Guess I’ll have to scavenge some stuff from the inn like everyone else—”

“There will be no need for that, either,” Constance said, hurrying to the larder and returning moments later with a neatly-folded pile of clothes. “I found these for you last night, but simply forgot to give them to you until now! How generous of me!”

Matthias unfolded the clothes. The shirt was puffy and voluminous, a ruffled neckline and billowing sleeves calling to mind a roguish, swashbuckling privateer from the cover of a romance novel. “It’s a little… fancy,” he remarked.

“I have decided that when I rebuild House Nuvelle, you shall be my vassal,” she told him. “Those clothes are the perfect fit for your newfound position!”

“Oh. Okay.” Matthias eyed the shirt again and hesitantly started putting it on.

“You know he’s not, um, a _human_ mouse like us, right, Coco?” Hapi mumbled through a mouthful of scone. “He’s a _mouse_ mouse.”

“Yes, Hapi, I am aware,” Constance answered.

“Yeah, so, uh… unless I’m wildly misunderstanding how the antidote to the poison works, that means he can’t be turned back into a human like us. There’s nothing to turn him _back_ into. He’s just a mouse.”

“Oh, I am fully aware of that. He will be my adorable little mouse servant!” Constance reached over and tousled his fur.

Matthias adjusted the fit of the shirt over his shoulders. “Well, Constance, it fits okay, which is more than I can say for those robes—those were hand-me-downs of hand-me-downs, y’know, my great granddad sewed them for my grandma, or so the story goes, or maybe it was my great grandma who sewed them for my grandpa; so they were kinda like heirlooms, albeit, y’know, old and tattered and kinda stinky heirlooms. But the point is…”

“I like it! You look like a pirate in that thing!” Balthus said, pounding a fist on the table with vehement approval. The table shook and the scones all jumped. “All you need is a greatcoat and your brother’s eyepatch—oh, and a hook hand! You’ve gotta get a hook hand!”

“You look like you’re meant to be swinging from chandeliers,” Hapi said. “Go get yourself a rapier and maybe a cool masquerade mask and all the lady mice’ll swoon over you.”

Matthias paled. “Swinging from ch-chandeliers? No, um… I d-don’t think I could do something that heroic, no matter how cool my clothes are—Y’know, those things are awfully high up, especially for a mouse, and…”

Constance beamed. “Is my taste in fashion not _impeccable,_ Matthias?”

Marianne trudged into the room and tapped her on the shoulder. “Um… excuse me… I’m sorry…”

“Yes? What is it, darling?” Constance asked her.

“I spoke to your bat. I told him that even though he sleeps during the day, he will have to help us instead today, and he was a little irritated, but he understands.” She took one of the few empty seats remaining at the table and set her paws in her lap.

“Try one of the scones,” Claude told her. “They’re amazing!”

Marianne shook her head. “No thank you. You need them to keep up your strength. I am fine.”

Dimitri pushed his plate across the table toward her. “Here, have the rest of mine. I’ve had enough, and there’s no sense letting food go to waste.”

Marianne relented and nibbled halfheartedly on one of the pastries.

“Has anyone seen Edelgard?” Dimitri asked, glancing around the room. “I didn’t hear anything from her when I knocked on her door on the way down here. I never took her for such a late sleeper.”

“Maybe she’s in danger,” Claude needled him. “Dimitri, you should go and rescue her! Maybe she’s being menaced by an ant!”

Annette wilted. _“Claaaauuude…”_ she moaned, hiding her face in her paws. _“It was a_ big _ant!”_

Almost as if on cue, Edelgard descended from the staircase, yawning, with Bernadetta in tow. “Good morning,” she said curtly. “I take it we’re all preparing for today’s mission?”

“If by ‘preparing’ you mean ‘making sure we don’t all keel over and die of hunger during our assault,’ then yes,” Claude said, tossing a scone at her. She caught it, her paw snapping up in the blink of an eye, and nibbled on a corner. “So, how’d you sleep, Your Princess-ship?”

Edelgard paused, the tip of the scone resting on her mouth. Lysithea could swear she could see tears welling up in her eyes. The princess and her reclusive classmate had been trapped down here as mice twice as long, at least, as everyone else, and had been living in squalor; this breakfast must have been her first real meal in two long days.

“How is it, Your Highness?” Constance asked, bowing before her. “I do hope I have made an impression by the impeccable job I did supervising my new personal baker this morning.”

Edelgard was speechless. She stared down at the scone, appraising it greedily as though it were a gold nugget or a precious diamond, and nibbled on it again.

Bernadetta turned her head and looked at her expectantly. “…Is it good?”

Edelgard’s eyes were fixed on the scone as though entranced. “No complaints,” she breathed once she had composed herself, tearing the scone in half and offering the rest to a grateful Bernadetta, who all but inhaled it.

As she circled the table to sit at one of the few empty seats remaining, she passed by Lysithea and their eyes met. Lysithea half expected to see a pitying look in her eyes, like Catherine’s, like _everybody’s,_ but instead she found in Edelgard’s pale lavender eyes a cold, hard look of solidarity—a look that said, _I know your pain and I swear that together we will crush those responsible for it._

With everybody present, the last of the scones vanished with blinding speed, and in no time at all, it was time to travel down to Mousehaven for their final assault on those who slither in the dark.

“Before we pack up and set out,” Claude said, “we need to pick a name for our little army. Any ideas? I’ve been trying to think of something incorporating our four houses, but…”

“We’re not so much an army,” Edelgard said, “as a strike force.”

“Green Gryphons, perhaps?” Dimitri offered. “Combining the colors of our houses, black, blue, and gold, would produce a dark green, and a gryphon is a combination of eagle and lion.”

“You’re missing two other animals, though,” Balthus interjected. “What about us Ashen Wolves?”

“Yeah, and you aren’t being very inclusive of us Golden Deer, are you?” Claude added. “Right, Lysithea?”

“Maybe the gryphon can have antlers and wolf fangs,” Annette offered.

“I was merely suggesting that because the Battle of the Eagle and Lion is coming up,” Dimitri explained. “As with that, just because the name doesn’t mention deer doesn’t mean your house is not included, Claude.”

“I still think it’s exclusionary.”

Lysithea rolled her eyes. Claude and his attitude were so _irritating_ sometimes. “Is this really necessary? We don’t have much time.”

“Yes,” most of the voices at the table cried out in unison.

“The Committee to Restore House Nuvelle,” Constance offered. “Isn’t that a good name, Matthias?”

“Anti-Chud Action Faction?” Matthias suggested.

“Edelgard, surely you have a better idea,” Dimitri said, looking to the leader of the Black Eagles.

Edelgard looked just as bemused to be a part of this as Lysithea felt. “Er… Well, we _are_ an alliance of Garreg Mach’s three houses—”

“Ahem,” said Balthus.

“Garreg Mach’s three official houses and one _un_ official house,” she continued, “so we should call ourselves the Alliance of Three—”

“Ahem,” said Balthus.

“—of _Four_ Houses.”

“The Alliance of Four Houses…” Claude stroked his whiskers thoughtfully. “Hmm… Who likes it?”

Most of the people at the table nodded and muttered their agreements. It was, at least, a perfectly adequate name, if a little uncreative. Even Lysithea had to admit that she liked it.

Alois grinned. Lysithea felt her heart drop into her stomach and braced herself for the worst. He looked around the table, stealing a furtive glance as though he knew the chaos he was about to unleash. “More like… Alliance of Four _Mouses,_ right?” he announced, punctuating his joke with a boisterous laugh.

A good portion of the table began to agree much more enthusiastically, much to the dismay clearly visible on Edelgard’s face.

“No, no, no,” Edelgard said, scowling, “you are making it _silly._ We cannot attack an enemy whose tendrils pervade all of Fódlan with a _silly_ name—”

“All in favor of the Alliance of Four Mouses,” Claude called out, “say ‘aye’ and raise your paws!”

A chorus of ‘ayes’ rang out, a forest of upraised arms to match its strength and volume. Alois, Claude, Annette, Caspar, Balthus, Matthias, and Byleth had all raised their paws.

Edelgard gave Byleth a forlorn, betrayed look. “My teacher… _why?”_ she gasped, hurt.

Claude tallied the votes. “All in favor of the Alliances of Four _Houses,_ say ‘aye’ and raise your paws!”

A much weaker chorus of ‘ayes’ rang out, accompanied by a far sparser forest of arms. Edelgard, Dimitri, Catherine, and Constance were the only ones with their paws raised. Lysithea, Bernadetta, Linhardt, Marianne, and Hapi had abstained from voting.

“That settles it,” Claude said. “Henceforth, we are the Alliance of Four Mouses.”

“Wait a minute,” Dimitri said. “There are sixteen of us here, and only seven voted for that. That’s less than half.”

“And that’s almost twice as many votes as Edelgard’s name got,” Claude reminded him.

“But five people didn’t vote for your name. Their votes should go to us.” Dimitri looked to Marianne expectantly. Edelgard gave Bernadetta the same expectant look.

“But they didn’t vote for _you,”_ Claude said. “Blame yourselves for not coming up with a better name; no one owed you their vote.” He stood up. “Alright, Alliance of Four Mouses! Let’s move out!”

As Lysithea hurried after the others to prepare for battle, she passed by Edelgard, who was staring at the floor and muttering to herself, dazed, _“But the name doesn’t make_ sense _anymore…”_

* * *

Seteth stared down at Rhea. Rhea looked up at him from within a dollhouse resting on her otherwise-empty bed, her snout and whiskers faintly quivering, with a disconcertingly hard gleam in her tiny, round button eyes. Her tail flicked irritably back and forth, lashing across the tiny, ornately-detailed rug that rested on the tiny floor of the tiny toy house.

Seteth had tried to make her comfortable, but he had to admit that while he knew history inside and out (he’d _lived_ most of it); he knew how to look after horses, pegasi, and wyverns (he was _especially_ good with wyverns) as well as he knew how to look after his own body; he knew the laws of just about every county and dukedom in Fódlan down to the most minor municipal bylaws; and he’d even mastered craftsmanship; creating a home for somebody who was three inches tall was something of a challenge. He’d made the dollhouse a long time ago for a pair of orphaned children who’d lived in the monastery at the time, but it wasn’t exactly meant to be _lived_ in, and Rhea in her current form wasn’t quite to the same scale as the little paper dolls he’d made to go along with it. If anything, she was just a hair too large.

“If it is any consolation,” Flayn said with an innocent smile, “you look very cute, Lady Rhea.”

Rhea scowled. It had been a very long time since Seteth had last seen a mouse _scowl_ like that. “Thank you, Cethleann,” she squeaked back to her in terse, clipped tones. She didn’t sound the least bit thankful at all.

“Forgive me if this is an impertinent question, but… may I pet you?”

Seteth put a hand on Flayn’s shoulder and gently, but firmly tugged her backward. “Flayn. That _is_ an impertinent question. You may not pet Lady Rhea.”

A knock on the door rang out through Rhea’s mostly empty bedroom. Seteth stood up. “I will get it,” he sighed. “Flayn, do not touch her.”

He hoped it wasn’t anything serious. The last thing he needed was urgent business from one of the knights or bishops that demanded Rhea’s attention, as her attention was currently in short supply and her temper as of late was even shorter than her stature.

He took a deep breath and cracked open the door. “Hello. I am afraid Lady Rhea is not feeling well this morning. Speak your business with her to me and I will relay your message—”

“Mister Seteth, it’s me, Cyril,” Cyril said. Seteth looked down, meeting Cyril’s weary, gray-ringed maroon eyes. “If it’s alright, I got some stuff for Lady Rhea.”

Seteth looked down farther to see a tray with a kettle, a thimble, a single wedge of a scone, and a lump of cloth resting on it.

“I made her some chamomile, since it’s her favorite and all,” Cyril continued, “and the thimble’s for drinking it, since she’s too small for a cup. I spent half the night trying to sew a little gown for her so she won’t be indecent anymore.”

Seteth noticed a myriad of reddened pinpricks dotting the boy’s fingertips. He plucked the gown off the tablecloth and held it up, pinching its collar between his forefinger and thumb.

“Tried to make it a little big since I didn’t know her measurements. Dunno.” Cyril shrugged. “Never made clothes before.”

That was obvious. “I am certain she will appreciate this,” Seteth said, taking the tray from him. “Thank you for your hard work.”

Cyril bowed. “Alright. I’ll go back to looking after the cats. I’ll let you know if I see any weird mice around, too.”

Seteth took the tray back to Rhea, setting it down on the bed next to the dollhouse. “Lady Rhea, Cyril has prepared breakfast for you, as well as clothing. Flayn, help me with this tea.”

While Rhea put on the gown—Seteth was certain he recognized the fabric from the drapery—he set the tray on the bed and reached into the dollhouse, plucking out a miniature ceramic cup and a tiny plate from the dining room table. Pouring a full-size kettle into a cup made for scale to a four-inch-tall person was a challenge, but Flayn managed to only scald his fingertips a little. He tore off a tiny bit of the scone and set it on the plate.

Flayn pinched the plate and teacup delicately in her fingers and set them down on the table. “Breakfast is served, Lady Rhea!” she announced. “Oh, this reminds me of when Bernadetta had been turned into an adorable little half-mouse gremlin and she and Lady Edelgard were hiding together and I volunteered to bring them food for the day. I cannot believe it was only four days ago.”

This was the first time Seteth had heard about that. “You did _what,_ Flayn?”

Flayn looked up at him. Her face fell. “Ah. I was not supposed to tell you that,” she said ruefully.

“Flayn, when this is behind us, we must have a talk about how you are spending time with your… friends.”

If Flayn’s face could have fallen any further, it would have reached the depths of Abyss and found all the missing students. “But Brother, they are good people…”

“They are good people, yes, for what little we know about them. However, you are not safe around them. If the Agarthans are truly at work here, then you are not safe _here,_ either. It is possible we will have to go back into hiding.”

Flayn’s jaw set. “Brother, no! We cannot—”

Seteth laid a hand on her cheek. “I cannot fathom losing you, Flayn. Not again.”

Unlike him, Flayn had spent much of the past thousand years fast asleep, and the last few decades in total seclusion. The world had passed her by, and even after the War of Heroes that had left her wounded and scarred a millennium ago, even after her kidnapping just last month, she still failed to fully understand the danger that surrounded her. She was too impatient, too impulsive, too immature.

He could not let the Agarthans do to her what they had done to the rest of their race. He could not let them carve weapons from her bones. He was beginning to better understand the mindsets of his brothers, Indech and Macuil, who had retreated completely from human society after the war. Even if it broke her heart, he would protect her.

After all (even though he insisted she call him her ‘brother,’ it was only a smokescreen to further obfuscate their identities) she was his _daughter,_ and for the sake of her future happiness, even if she had to hate him and shout at him for it, he would protect her.

Rhea sat at the little table with her little cup of tea and little plate and finished nibbling on the last few crumbs of her little bit of scone. The makeshift gown was far too big for her, draped over her shoulders and pooling on the floor around her, but at least she was no longer nude. “This is ridiculous,” she muttered. “The great Saint Seiros, the Immaculate One, bane of Nemesis, uniter of Fódlan, daughter of the Goddess Sothis, reduced to _this,_ eating crumbs and wearing rags cut from… drapery _._ ” She let out a forlorn sigh. “Oh, Mother, if you could see what they have done to me, would you pity me, or be ashamed…?”

“Perhaps you would feel more at ease if I pet you, Lady Rhea,” Flayn said, letting one finger hover around the ceiling of the dining room just over Rhea’s head. “All little furry things surely enjoy being petted.”

“Flayn. Please stop belaboring this point,” Seteth said, taking her hand back and guiding it out of the dollhouse. “Lady Rhea, I know our current situation is… difficult…”

“Difficult? _Difficult?”_ Rhea stood up and smashed her teacup against the floor. “Cichol, my stockpile of _polymorphus muridae_ and _antemorphus muridae_ ran dry a decade ago. The last remaining master of polymorphic spellcraft has passed away, and I am certain that the Agarthans are behind his passing. Whatever other experts there are in the world must surely be either deceased as well, or on _their_ side…” She stomped out of the dollhouse through the missing wall and onto her bed, then marched to the edge of the bed and crawled down the side to the floor. Her voice gradually quieted as the distance between her and Seteth grew, until all he could hear were faint squeaks ringing in his ears.

Seteth knelt down next to her. “Excuse me, Lady Rhea. I did not hear you.”

“I said,” Rhea spoke up, looking up at him and crossing her arms, “we will leave this monastery tonight and burn it to the ground!”

“Tonight? But one day is not much time to evacuate everyone,” Seteth protested. Rhea kept walking. He had to half-walk, half-crouch, scuttling like a crab, for her to remain within earshot.

“Evacuate? No, _evacuating_ would alert the Agarthans to our plan. We must catch them unaware.”

“Lady Rhea, setting the monastery on fire is too drastic an idea for me to conscience,” Seteth replied, shaking his head. “You are overreacting.”

“Setting the monastery on fire?!” Flayn exclaimed, rushing to Seteth’s side. “Lady Rhea, you cannot! What of the students? And the faculty? And the knights, who trust you with their lives?”

“Perhaps things are not as bad as they seem,” Seteth insisted, amazed that _he_ of all people was saying such a thing. “You must remain calm.”

Rhea fumed. “Bring me Professor Byleth.”

“I am afraid that will be difficult,” he said.

“I do not mind if she sees me like this,” she said. “Bring her to me. I must know that she is safe.”

“I am afraid nobody knows where she is,” he admitted. “She is not in her quarters, nor are any of her remaining students.”

“And yet you say things may not be as bad as they seem?” Rhea shot back frostily. “How bad do they seem to _you?_ Because from where I am standing, the last living heirs to the Hresvelg, Riegan, and Blaiddyd bloodlines are now mice, _permanently,_ and are likely dead already. Heirs to half of the great noble houses of the Empire have likely met the same fate. _I_ am a mouse. Most of the institutions of power within this land have been dealt a mortal blow. All we can do is inflict just as mortal a blow on our enemies and hope they perish before they can enjoy the chaos they have wrought.”

“Rhea. I am certain that Byleth and the students are still alive,” Seteth said. “And we cannot lose hope that an alternative cure may be found—”

“And there is nothing in any land’s laws claiming that its ruler _cannot_ be a mouse,” Flayn not-so-helpfully chimed in. “You could be Fódlan’s first mouse archbishop! Imagine that, Lady Rhea!”

Seteth felt his heart sink. He wondered if he should tell her—even the most well-taken-care-of mice rarely lived past two or three years. Those who had been subjected to the polymorphic magic at work here retained many traits of their human selves, but their lifespan was not one of them. Who knew if that would hold true for Rhea—she was, after all, not human—but as for the students…

Rhea thought for a moment. “You are right. We will not burn down Garreg Mach.” An eerie green light began to shine through her fur. “I will handle this _myself—”_

Seteth felt a surge of magic prickle his skin and bristle the hair on the back of his neck. He hastily stood up, stepped back, and dragged Flayn away. “Lady Rhea, no—” She was going to shed her human guise and return to her true form, the draconic Immaculate One—but the Immaculate One was gargantuan, twice the size of the largest dragon, and if she turned into _that_ in here, she’d bring the ceiling down on all of them, and likely collapse the floor as well!

A flash of green light obscured Rhea’s diminutive form and filled the room; even when he squeezed his eyes shut, he could still feel the light piercing his eyelids, blinding him.

The ceiling did not collapse. Nor did the floor. He did not find himself flung out the window or through the wall by a massively expanding wall of scaled flesh. Once the light had faded, he gingerly opened his eyes and waited for the dazzling spots and flecks dancing through his vision to decay.

Where Rhea had once stood now stood a creature about the size of a small dog, coming up only to Seteth’s knee. For the most part, she simply resembled a giant mouse with gleaming, snow-white fur; however, her long tail was thick and covered in white scales, her forepaws and hindpaws more resembled the hard-scaled talons of an eagle with thick ivory claws, and her emerald eyes were lizardlike with slitted pupils. Thin, leathery, membranous skin stretched across her forelegs and between her clawed fingertips, forming very rudimentary wings. She stood up on her hind legs, scaly tail lashing across the floor, and looked down at herself, her pink nose and whiskers twitching as she assessed her ‘true’ form.

“Oh,” Flayn said.

“Oh,” Seteth said, torn between being secretly relieved and even more concerned.

“Go find Cyril and release the cats into Abyss,” Rhea said, speaking in a much more audible growl. “All of them. Right now.”

“Lady Rhea, I—”

 _“All of them. Right now._ The Goddess Sothis shall recognize and protect her own. I am going back to bed,” she announced before scurrying up the side of the bed, her claws ripping at her sheets and leaving long, ragged gashes in the luxurious fabric. Once atop her bed, a green light overtook her and the diminutive dragon dissolved into a flurry of emerald sparks, reducing her to her mouse form once again. She stomped into the dollhouse, climbed the stairs to the bedroom inside the little house, and laid down on the (thankfully) mouse-sized bed within.

An uncomfortable silence descended over the Archbishop’s bedroom.

“I think,” Seteth said, taking Flayn and leading her to the door, “we should let Lady Rhea rest.”

“Brother,” she said once she and Seteth had left the archbishop’s bedroom and he had closed and locked the door behind him, “we cannot do as Lady Rhea asks, can we?”

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “We cannot. Cats cannot discern believers from non-believers. We must continue to wait.”

“Also… what did Lady Rhea mean by ‘her own stock’ of the poison?”

“Oh, it was a frivolous idea of hers a while ago,” Seteth explained. “She took pity on a group of people convicted of crimes against the church, so she had an old friend design that… poison. For a few years, she used it for all offenses punishable by death. She was attempting to be a ‘kinder, gentler’ archbishop. She even let them build little villages in the more remote parts of the monastery, provided they did not make nuisances of themselves.”

Flayn’s eyes lit up. “Little tiny villages filled with mouse people?” she gasped, delighted. “Why ever did she stop?”

“Her reasoning was that it better demonstrated the mercy of the Goddess by giving them a second chance—a life in which they could no longer carry out their wicked deeds. However, some of the people she had sentenced were… less than grateful regarding her mercy, so a group of them attempted to poison her and destroy the antidote,” Seteth said. “In return, she burned their cities and filled the monastery with cats to drive them out.” It was, he had to admit, a type of solution that Rhea seemed fond of. Considering what that genocidal butcher Nemesis had done to her people, it wasn’t especially difficult to see why she didn’t care much for second chances when it came to her enemies. “When all was said and done, she disposed of both poison and antidote so that its power could never be misused.”

“And yet here it is, being misused,” Flayn said, shaking her head. “I do hope that somewhere out there, somebody has made more of the antidote. I do not wish for Rhea or any of my friends to be mice forever.”

Seteth bowed his head, wondering what to say. Rhea was right. From what Byleth had told him after her run-in with Tomas last night, the Agarthans had taken great pains to monopolize the antidote before setting their plan in motion, and it wasn’t clear whether _they_ even had any left anymore. With experts in polymorphic magic so far and few in between (and many no doubt turned to the Agarthans’ side as part of their diabolical plan), and the ingredients for this particular potion so difficult and illegal to procure, things were looking bleak.

He recalled Byleth mentioning that her student, Hubert von Vestra, had had a vial of the antidote that had gone missing (Goddess knows where _he_ had gotten a hold of it). His best hope—for Rhea, for the three young lords, for everyone else who’d been caught in this hair-raising plot, for all of Fódlan itself—was in finding that vial. If he only knew where to even begin to look…

* * *

The Alliance of Four Mouses procured a boat from a tiny, run-down port near Mousebrook and navigated the sewer canal southward until the city of Mousehaven came into view. The canal ran slightly downhill from north to south; it was only a matter of setting it adrift in the currents, and before anybody knew it, the city walls loomed ahead over the boat from the stone shore.

If the city hadn’t been a fortress before those who slither in the dark had slithered into it, they had spared no expense in making it one. High walls engulfed it, built from fractured and fragmented stone tiles ripped from the floors and bricks torn from the walls and ceiling. The city jutted out of one wall, clusters of inelegant stone buildings climbing up the side to form a citadel at the top of a long artificial hill; the opposite wall had been knocked down, allowing the city to spill over into the adjacent corridor, its westward border abutting the sewage canal.

To Edelgard, the city looked like an enormous termite mound protruding from the earth, shaped not of dirt and sand but somehow _congealed_ out of the stone foundations of the monastery; a warped, almost grotesque parody of human civilization growing like a tumor within the monastery. The evil of the Agarthans seemed to pervade it, radiating off of it like an aura; while she knew they were no demons, she couldn’t help but feel something horribly supernatural at work, even if it was only her own fear.

“Just as I thought,” Claude said, his voice muffled by the beaked mask covering his face. “That’s definitely not something we’re gonna topple with brute force.”

“And _this,”_ Dimitri muttered, similarly clad in a stolen mage’s robe and mask, “is your alternative?”

Edelgard stood between them, her paws tied behind her back. She had only agreed to this plan because Byleth had endorsed it last night, but as much as she respected her teacher, the closer she came to the city, the more ill at ease she felt about it. To be in such close proximity to these monsters, restrained just as she’d been all those years ago…

She steeled herself, quashing that fear. She was tired of being a mouse. Tired of being afraid. Today, she would strike a blow against those who slither in the dark and she would never have cause to fear anything again.

She wondered, if the Agarthans were truly unified behind this plan, then was Thales here as well, or had he remained stationed in Enbarr? Would she have the opportunity to kill him?

A bat carrying two masked Agarthan mages landed on the deck of the ship as it neared the port. Edelgard stiffened, her fur bristling, and felt the twine tied around her wrists burn cold as a twinge of fear ran through her, but only for a moment before she quashed it. She looked to Lysithea, who had similarly flinched at the sight of the mages. Byleth’s paw fell to her sword and rested there, fingers twitching.

One of the mages removed their mask, uncovering Hapi’s face; the other mage revealed herself as Constance, and with that, the tension on the deck evaporated. Edelgard had known all along it was them, but it had been hard to be certain.

“Aerial reconnaissance complete!” Constance crowed, beaming pridefully.

“It’s bad,” Hapi added flatly. “Archers all over the walls. Mages on lookout. Lots of soldiers, enthralled rats, and so on. I counted about a hundred forty men. Er, mice. This place is as much a fortress as it looks. They’re ready.”

“A hundred forty?” Caspar scoffed. “That’s just, uh… ten for each of us!”

“That’s just how many were _outside,”_ Linhardt cautioned him. “Who knows how many they have squirreled away in there…”

Hapi shared the rest of the results of her aerial reconnaissance with the alliance. Most of her details on the city’s layout mirrored what they’d learned from the surviving soldiers they’d captured yesterday, although some of them hadn’t been entirely honest.

“Any chance you were spotted?” Byleth asked the flying duo.

“We kept as close to the ceiling as we could,” Constance said, “thanks to my prodigious flying skills.” She reached over to scratch her bat behind one of its constantly-wiggling ears. “Isn’t that right, Brucie?”

“If that’s what they have out now,” Claude said, “I’d hate to see what kind of a welcome party we’d face if they knew we were coming.” He looked to the others. “First step, we’ll take control of this port and infiltrate the city from the west gatehouse. Marianne, take Hapi’s place with Constance and wait on deck. You’re Squadron One. On our signal, take to the air—when the fighting breaks out, you and Constance will take care of magical offense and defense for us. Byleth, Lysithea, Bernie, you’ll accompany Dimitri, Edelgard, and me as Squadron Two. Hapi, Annette, Balthus, you’re Squadron Three; Caspar, Linhardt, Matthias, you’re Squadron Four; stay behind here and wait for our signal, then fan out to the north and south gates as planned.”

“Is it safe to have _five_ of you with Edelgard?” Matthias piped up. “That isn’t… overkill? They won’t be suspicious?”

“The more the merrier,” Claude answered.

“It’ll make it seem like she put up a fight,” Byleth said, slipping the Sword of the Creator under her robes to hide it from sight. “They would expect that of her as much as I would.”

“Wait.” Dimitri held up a paw. “Before we depart—Edelgard, may I speak with you for a moment below deck?”

Edelgard relaxed her wrists enough that she could slip one paw free of her restraints and followed him down a ladder into the ship’s hold. Down here, the gentle bobbing of the ship in the water was even more noticeable, as was the stench of the water it sailed in. “What is this about, Dimitri?” she asked.

“That fortress is larger and more heavily manned than I had expected,” he confessed, removing his facemask. “I value Claude’s strategic approach, but even so—there are still only fourteen of us. We might not make it out of here.”

It seemed an odd sentiment, coming from him. “We’ve all faced death before,” Edelgard reminded him. “When the Church sends us to clean up bandits or put down heretics, our lives are just as at risk. This is simply a bigger target.”

“I know,” he said. “Do not take me wrong; I did not bring you down here to complain about putting ourselves in harm’s way. There is something you should know.”

“If it’s about these slitherers,” she said, crossing her arms, “rest assured, I am much more acquainted with them than you.” She didn’t know what to expect from him—only that he had been giving her funny looks all yesterday. What was on his mind when he looked at her? What was he here to say?

He shook his head. “It isn’t that,” he replied, kneading his paws. “You lived for a year in Fhirdiad with your uncle, did you not?”

She very slightly nodded, though she still wasn’t sure if Arundel had been her uncle back then, or if Thales had already replaced him. She remembered so little from those days, after all, and at that age, she’d hardly been suspicious enough to be concerned about sinister doppelgangers, anyway. Maybe he’d never replaced Arundel at all. Maybe Thales was her _biological_ uncle. Maybe—perish the thought!—she was part _Agarthan._ The idea sent a shiver down her spine she struggled to suppress.

“I don’t suppose you… remember much of it,” he said after a few seconds had passed without her answering, punctuating his statement with a stiff, awkward little chuckle. “Your uncle brought you there with your mother, right?”

Edelgard still didn’t respond. She faintly remembered that her mother had made the trip to Fhirdiad with her, but that had been the last she’d seen of her. Arundel had said it wasn’t safe for her to live with them. She’d never seen her mother again. Who knew what had been done to her?

“Did you…” Dimitri took a deep breath. “Did you have any friends in Fhirdiad?”

Edelgard bristled under his asinine interrogation. “This is ridiculous; the two of us both have better uses of our time.”

“I just want to know if you… enjoyed yourself in Fhirdiad. That is all,” he answered lamely. “It is my city and my kingdom, so it’s a matter of personal pride that the city treated you well.”

Edelgard gave him an incredulous look and headed back toward the deck. All this for _that?_ “Objectively, it is a fine city. Personally, I hated living there. It was but a prelude to the imprisonment I endured afterward.”

Dimitri grabbed her by the shoulder, wrenching her backward with his prodigious strength. She had half a mind to slap him across his furry cheek, but—

“Wait. Do you remember teaching a boy how to dance?” he asked.

Edelgard felt a flicker of flame in her mind—a faint memory. She’d had a friend in the city, a noble boy whose name and face she couldn’t recall, but… how could Dimitri have known that?

“I do,” she said, discomforted not only by the strength of his grip but by how pertinent the question he’d asked had been. How could he know? “Why? Did you know him?”

“I might’ve known him,” he said, letting go of her.

“He must have bragged about me to all his friends. Befriending a princess would be quite a feather in his cap,” she muttered frostily.

“What do you remember about him?”

“Little.”

“This may sound like an odd question, but… do you remember him giving you a dagger?”

“A dagger?” she asked. An eerie chill pricked the fur on the back of her neck, and though she wanted to leave the ship’s hold and get to work now more than anything, she found herself unable to take another step forward. She slowly turned to face Dimitri. She remembered that dagger, but— _no one_ else had known about that until she’d told Bernadetta yesterday. She hadn’t even told Hubert. How could _he_ know?

“A dagger.” He nodded. “And with it, he told you…”

“To cut your own path and make your own future,” Edelgard recited, as entranced as she was unnerved. “How—” She clutched her arms defensively to her chest, her fur bristling. “How did you know…”

“That boy was me… El.”

She was dumbfounded. _El._ She hadn’t been imagining it yesterday. He had called her _El_ back then, too. “What,” she breathed, “did you call me…”

“And your mother,” he added, rushing through his words as though he’d been holding them in his chest for a long time, “she went missing, didn’t she? You never saw her again. But she didn’t vanish—my father granted her asylum. She changed her name and went into hiding.”

“How do you know that?” A flash of anger ran through her mind. It felt almost insulting to hear him spun wild theories about her mother like that.

“She married my father. She was my stepmother,” Dimitri blurted out. His words hung in the air.

Edelgard just stared at him.

“I wanted you to know,” he said, staring at the slightly-swaying floor, “in case one of us does not… make it. I wish I could have told you sooner, but since I first saw you at the academy, you had… changed.”

She kept staring at Dimitri… at her _stepbrother,_ recalling how on the day she had first met Byleth, she (as the Flame Emperor) had hired that bandit and his gaggle of idiots to attack him, Claude, and herself, aiming to kill the boys in the process. Dimitri had been a threat to her plans—to _their_ plans, which had been _her_ plans, because there had been no other way—and she had plotted to have him eliminated from the equation by the blade of an axe. Her stepbrother. Family, though not by blood. She had planned his death. Even since then, she had continued to see him as nothing more than an obstacle, something that she would have to eliminate sooner or later for the sake of her world.

She had meant to kill her brother. Just another life sacrificed in the cruel calculus of the greater good at any cost…

“Yes,” she said, shaken. “I had changed. The girl you knew as El died in a dungeon in Enbarr.”

“I am sorry,” Dimitri said, crestfallen. Surely he’d been expecting some emotional reunion. Perhaps he’d expected to see her weep tears of joy.

“No, _I_ am the one who should feel sorry for you. I almost pity you for remembering that girl.”

“Likewise, perhaps it is better that you don’t remember that boy you knew,” he said. “I wish I could say he died during the Tragedy of Duscur. But he didn’t.” He shook his head. “He just became me.”

Even his self-deprecation had a tinge of arrogance. “He could have done worse, then,” Edelgard scoffed.

Dimitri gave her a haunted look and lifted a paw to the bandage hiding his injured eye. “Perhaps,” he said, halfheartedly. “I hope that someday we can be friends again, though.”

She decided not to dignify that with a response, and wordlessly turned her back on him and headed for the deck.

“This only confirms that these slithering monsters have touched _all_ of our lives for the worse,” he said, regaining his composure and following behind her as she climbed the ladder to the deck. “I am loath to take a life, but these monsters who killed the El I knew must pay.”

If only he knew. Edelgard wondered if she should tell him that the Agarthans had had a hand in what had happened to his parents—to _her_ mother.

“We’re ready,” Edelgard announced as she emerged onto the deck from the hold. She slipped her paws back into her restraints as her ‘captors’ gathered around her, masked and anonymous. Once more, Claude coached her on how to position her arms so that she could easily slip free of her bonds when the time came. She wondered how he’d become such an expert at it.

Dimitri put his mask back on and took her by the arm. One of the mages slipped behind her and tightened the twine binding her wrists until it cut into her skin. Edelgard felt a twinge of fear, even though she knew whoever was behind that mask was an ally. She’d never felt _comfortable_ around Thales’ men, but being a mouse and having prey instincts constantly slithering around in her head made it worse.

She looked for Bernadetta among the dark mages gathered on deck. She was sure she’d find her in whichever mage was trying the hardest to look invisible. Sure enough, when her eyes landed on the one mage doing her best to become one with the shadows, she was rewarded with a faint, worried squeak. She said nothing, but gave Bernadetta a consoling nod, as much for her as for herself.

No time for fear, she told herself, staring ahead at the pier looming ahead as a squad of soldiers and masked mages rushed out of the gatehouse to tie the boat to the pier and welcome its passengers. Today, she would be an eagle again.

* * *

Bernadetta watched Edelgard walk in front of her, flanked by Claude and Dimitri, who both had an arm looped around hers, with Byleth and Lysithea positioned at the front of the formation. The five of them, herself included, formed the points of an inverted pentagram around the princess. Even though it was all an act, it was still unnerving to see Edelgard captured by the enemy, with her paws behind her back, her head bowed, and a defeated slump in her shoulders.

Surely Edelgard only looked so weak and weary in order to lower the enemy’s guard, yet Bernadetta couldn’t help but wonder if there was any genuine fear in her heart. A week ago, she wouldn’t have entertained the possibility that Edelgard could be truly afraid of anything. But a week ago, Edelgard hadn’t been a mouse. A week ago, Bernadetta hadn’t seen her break down and cower under a nightgown. A week ago, Bernadetta hadn’t heard her cry out in her sleep. A week ago, Bernadetta hadn’t known about the pain she carried in her heart and mind, the way her composure could falter like a candle’s flame wracked by a gust of wind, the fragile pillar hidden behind her impenetrable emotional walls. A week ago, Bernadetta hadn’t known what these monsters had done to her—and what they might still do to her.

It was enough to make her wish that the two of them were back at the inn, safe, lying in each other’s arms, sharing their warmth, but here, now, all Bernadetta could do was inch closer and rest her paw against Edelgard’s, letting Edelgard’s fingers curl around hers and intertwine.

Edelgard glanced at her over her shoulder and gave her a slow, grateful nod, as though to say, _‘that will do.’_

Bernadetta pulled back, noticing a group of soldiers walking out to meet them halfway from the city’s gatehouse. If they saw her being even the least bit affectionate toward Edelgard, she’d surely blow everyone’s cover!

She took a deep breath and tried to calm herself. She was glad, at least, that this was a sneaking and infiltration mission instead of a no-holds-barred assault like she’d feared. Just sneak in, find the enemy commanders, take them out (probably from a distance—all the better for her), secure whatever that ‘weapon’ Matthias had lost was, wait for Squadrons One, Three, and Four to cause chaos across the city, sneak out, head for the southern exit, and wait for the cavalry to arrive in the form of whatever assistance Alois and Catherine could summon. She hated rushing into battle; sneaking around and trying not to be seen was something she was much more well suited for. On the other hand, though, skulking around in a disguise and waiting for someone to see right through it was hell for her anxiety…

“You the team from Mousebrook?” one of the soldiers asked Byleth and Lysithea. “Don’t remember ‘em sending so many mages. Well, where are the weapons?”

Byleth stepped forward. “We were sidetracked. But we discovered something more valuable than weapons.” And with that, she stepped aside to reveal Edelgard in all her glory.

Edelgard’s shoulders slumped and her knees buckled and bent, as though she were pretending to be so worn out that only Claude and Dimitri’s grips were keeping her on her feet.

The soldier whistled. “Holy shit.”

“Hmm.” One of the other soldiers leaned in to examine her, his whiskers twitching as he sniffed the air around her. Bernadetta watched Edelgard flinch and hunch her shoulders and realized that the princess was copying _her_ body language. She wasn’t sure if she should be flattered or embarrassed.

“Took all five of us to bring her down,” Claude said, adopting an unusually rough cadence that didn’t suit him in the slightest. “Doesn’t have much fight in her now, though.”

“Nothing drains the soul of its will to fight like dark magic,” Lysithea said.

“I’ll say,” the other soldier said. “You’ve made her docile, like a winter catfish.” Before anyone could stop him, he reached out and snatched a lock of her hair, severing it with a flash of his knife. Bernadetta saw Byleth reach for the Sword of the Creator hidden under her robes, primed to kill all of these soldiers with a single stroke of her blade.

“I’ll thank you not to manhandle La— _our prisoner,”_ Dimitri barked.

The impudent soldier stepped back, twirling the lock of snow-white hair around one finger. “C’mon. Get your souvenirs while the gettin’s good.”

“Follow us to the gatehouse,” the lead soldier said. “So, what are your names? Myson and Solon will be chuffed to see what you’ve accomplished. Might even reward you.”

Bernadetta watched her other four comrades share bemused glances. None of them had invented names for themselves, apparently.

“We need neither reward nor recognition,” Claude said. “A job well done is enough for us.”

They entered the gatehouse. The soldiers spoke among the other guards.

One of the guards on duty tapped his finger rhythmically against a strange desktop contraption in a way that reminded Bernadetta of the blink-code ‘language’ Byleth had taught the Black Eagles. She trained her ear on the tapping sound. The code she knew was something Byleth’s father had invented and passed down to her, and so whatever the guard was tapping out, it wasn’t the same cipher and wasn’t intelligible.

“So, are we going forward, or not?” Claude asked.

Byleth stiffened. Her cloak whirled around her, and with a sharp thunderclap the blade of her sword telescoped and whipped through the air, cutting a bloody gash into the tapping soldier’s throat and throwing him against the wall. Lysithea leaped into action, summoning a burst of dark spikes in front of the door just as the soldiers made a break for it; between her magic and Byleth’s sword, it didn’t take long before no living souls remained in the gatehouse.

“We’re going forward,” Byleth announced. She turned to the table that held the tapping device and brought her sword down on it, smashing the metal device and wooden table to twisted and splintered fragments. “I don’t know how it works, but this device can send messages to central command.”

“So they know we’re here now,” Dimitri said.

“I’m not sure how quickly I cut the message off,” she admitted. “At any rate, they weren’t going to let us move forward.”

“Would it be so bad if we’d stayed here?” Lysithea asked, skeptical.

People who weren’t in Byleth’s class didn’t know it, but she seemed to have a sixth sense for imminent life-threatening danger. Bernadetta couldn’t count how many times Byleth had revised a plan of hers seemingly at random in order to avoid some unforeseen threat. Sometimes, it was like she could see the future.

“Yes,” Byleth said. “We stick to the plan. Head into the city.” She moved on ahead. _“Hurry.”_

They hurried, hastily exiting the gatehouse and stepping onto the street. Mousehaven’s streets weren’t exactly bustling; only soldiers patrolled the streets, like a city under military occupation. Bernadetta felt the oppressive force of dozens of pairs of eyes bearing down on her and the rest of the group.

 _“Everyone, stand up straight and look like you belong,”_ Claude hissed. _“Except you,”_ he added, nudging Edelgard, who did her best to look defeated.

The squad crossed the street. Bernadetta felt a strange pressure in the back of her mind, frisson running up her neck and prickling her fur—

And then there was a roar like a dozen cannons going off at once and a wall of heat and pressure that slammed into Bernadetta’s back, throwing her forward. The pressure against her back, like getting kicked by a horse, was second only to the force of the impact as her front collided with the street. Stinging pellets of stone fell like rain, prickling her back.

Chest aching, she rolled onto her back, gazing at the flames wreathing the gatehouse. She could hear nothing but a high-pitched ringing in her ears, even as Byleth—or, someone she assumed was Byleth—picked her up and helped her to her feet.

Sound gradually returned to the world, muffled at first, as though someone had stuffed her ears with cotton and was gradually removing it bit by fluffy bit.

 _“…you_ know _that was going to happen?”_ Claude asked Byleth.

 _“Did_ they _do that?”_ Dimitri asked. _“Do they really mean to_ kill _her?”_

Edelgard had fallen to the street, a dark stain blossoming on her fur where her forehead had cracked against the smooth stone tile. She groaned as she struggled to pull herself up with her arms still tied behind her back. Bernadetta rushed to her side and helped her up, brushing bits of stone fragments out of her fur and hair.

When Edelgard looked up at her and flinched, Bernadetta put a gloved paw to her cheek. _“It’s okay; it’s just me.”_

Lysithea rushed to her side, paws already aglow with healing magic, and tended to the wound on Edelgard’s head. “Who could have cast a spell like that?” she wondered aloud, staring up at the plumes of smoke billowing from the gatehouse’s forcibly-opened door and blown-out windows. “I don’t see any other mages around.”

“Is everyone alright?” Byleth asked.

“I don’t understand,” Edelgard muttered, shaking her head. A dark blotch still stained her fur just above her right eye and blood trickled from one nostril, but her wounds were healed. “If they simply wanted a corpse from me, Kronya could have killed me herself yesterday…”

“Perhaps their plans have changed,” Dimitri said.

“Or perhaps,” Claude said, staring at the billowing flames licking the edges of the gatehouse’s door, “they thought you’d survive that.”

There was a hiss of rushing air overhead and a flash of light. Bernadetta looked up to see, perched on the eaves of the roof above her group, a familiar black-and-white mouse with fiery hair.

 _“Oh, we’ll take whatever we can get now,”_ Kronya hissed. _“Alive is preferable—but dead will do just fine, even if we have to reassemble your corpse from a hundred little pieces!”_

She leaped off the roof, drawing a wicked knife from her side and striking as soon as her paws touched the ground. Bernadetta felt the knife graze her forearm as she left back; the scratch it left immediately started burning as though someone had squeezed lemon juice into the wound and rubbed it down with salt for good measure.

Byleth whipped the Sword of the Creator out of her robes yet again and swatted away Kronya’s knife in mid-swing. _“Everyone, run!”_

Kronya produced two more long, slender daggers from within her cloak and leather armor, crossing them together in an icepick grip over her chest as she slunk into a combat stance. _“Fell Star…”_ she spat. “Your carcass will do just fine, too!”

Dimitri hauled Edelgard and Bernadetta both to their feet as Bernadetta clutched the screaming gash in her arm and Edelgard ripped her paws free of her restraints. “Come on!”

 _“Lysithea, fire off the signal!”_ Claude shouted out as the party minus Byleth pulled away and ran down the street. Lysithea flung out her paw into the air and hurled an orb of black miasma into the air; it popped high above the city walls with a loud bang and a flurry of sparks blossoming like an ethereal violet blooming in the darkness.

The archers waiting atop the wall swiveled and took aim, firing their volleys at the ground. Bernadetta felt an arrow narrowly graze the tips of her ears as Edelgard grabbed her and held her close.

“So much for your plan, Claude,” Lysithea growled, conjuring a cluster of black lights and throwing them at one of the archers; they buzzed around him like a swarm of gnats and with a strangled cry, he fell from the ramparts and hit the ground with a sickening splat. “Now the whole city’s chasing us!”

“The broad strokes are still the same,” Claude assured her, zigzagging through the hail of arrows as he detoured to pluck the bow and quiver from the fallen archer’s body. “It’s all down to Squadrons Three and Four to distract their forces at the north and south entrances. We’re just starting the party a bit earlier!”

A troop of lance-toting soldiers riding atop rats turned the corner, blocking off their escape, as an unearthly metallic howl rang in the air, repeating itself every second like the tolling of church bells.

“Remind me to _never_ attend any of your parties, Claude!” Dimitri protested.

The archers held their fire as the mounted soldiers charged forward and entered the fray. Lysithea cut one down with a blast of magic, killing the rat and throwing its rider into the air; Claude felled one of the soldiers with a well-aimed arrow; he toppled to the ground and his rat ran rampant, scurrying aimlessly down the street.

With the mounted soldiers’ ranks broken, the party slipped through, Byleth hurrying to catch up behind them.

“Are you okay, Bernadetta?” Byleth asked, trying her best to examine the wound on Bernadetta’s arm while she and the others weaved and darted through the city streets with Kronya and her soldiers in hot pursuit. She, Bernadetta, and Edelgard ducked into a narrow alleyway behind the others, moving forward while Lysithea and Claude slipped back to take down anyone who tried to follow them into the alley’s narrow confines.

“I-It hurts,” Bernadetta gasped. Every time the wound throbbed, it knocked the air out of her lungs as though someone had punched her in the stomach, and the stinging was enough to bring tears to her eyes.

Edelgard ripped a strip of cloth from Bernadetta’s sleeve and rolled up the rest of it up to her elbow. “That knife was made from Agarthum. The metal itself is poisonous, but it’s just a scratch, so you should be okay.”

“P- _Poisonous?”_

“But not lethal,” Edelgard assured her. There was a heartening flash of warmth in her cold eyes. She wrapped the cloth tightly around Bernadetta’s arm, enough to cover the wound, and tied it off. The pressure of the makeshift bandage against her arm was firm, steady, and stern, staunching the flow of blood and pressing away the pain. “Not in itself, anyway. The pain will fade.”

Byleth patted Bernadetta on the shoulder. “It’ll be okay,” she assured her.

“If you’re well enough to walk,” Dimitri said, ripping an arrow out of his thigh and hefting a stolen lance, “we should keep pushing forward.”

The party retreated, Claude and Lysithea hastily bringing up the rear. “If we can take down another mage,” Claude said to Edelgard, “you could take his clothes. Then we might be able to keep a low profile until things die down.”

Edelgard clutched her ragged red cloak tighter around her shoulders. Though she’d never said anything about it, Bernadetta was beginning to figure that it held a lot of sentimental value for her, like a security blanket. It was part of her uniform, after all. Maybe it helped remind her that she used to be human.

 _“You can just wear your cloak under it,”_ Bernadetta suggested to her. Edelgard glanced away, embarrassed.

They emerged from the alleyway into a warzone. Byleth quickly slipped in front to parry a blow from a rat-riding soldier’s crocheting needle, the bony blade of the Sword of the Creator ringing against the hollow steel of the long, hooked needle. Lysithea mired a trio of axe-wielding soldiers in a bog of luminous black sludge, immobilizing them while Claude picked them off. One of the rat-riders took aim with a bow; Dimitri threw his spear and struck him in the chest, killing him.

Edelgard salvaged an axe, Bernadetta a bow and quiverful of arrows. While Edelgard leaped into battle easily and without compunction, Bernadetta found herself hesitant. Why did it have to end up like this? Why couldn’t Claude’s plan have just _worked?_ She just wanted to run away and find some place to hide, but knowing how much Edelgard trusted her, she just couldn’t indulge in that kind of cowardice. Even though her arm still hurt…

An axe slipped past her, nicking the tips of her whiskers; she yelped and leaped back, instinctually nocking and loosing an arrow in the span of a second and catching the soldier in the throat. The wound on her arm screamed and throbbed painfully as she nocked another arrow and fired just as quickly, taking out the eye of one of the rat mounts. Rearing back and throwing off its rider, it squeaked and squealed in pain so pathetically that Bernadetta had half a mind to run up to it and pet it and tell it that everything would be okay. “S-Sorry!” she called out, hurrying off in pursuit of the others.

As she aimed her arrow over Edelgard’s shoulder to catch the soldier grappling with her axe, a blast of miasma caught her in the chest and threw her to the street. The caustic black mist seeped under her mask, choked the life from her lungs, stung her eyes and nostrils; she choked, gagged, and struggled to cough it out as she writhed on the ground.

A mouse with pale pink skin and raven-black fur loomed over her from the other end of a long, gray-black tunnel, glowering contemptuously at her with one sickly yellow eye.

 _“Harm Lady Edelgard, will you, pest?”_ he spat at her with a bone-chillingly familiar voice. _“How slow do you want your death to be?”_

 _“H-Hubert?”_ she choked out, the black mist burning her lungs and throat, stinging the roof of her mouth. She couldn’t muster the strength to speak much more than that—she could barely breathe—but she wanted to tell him, she _had_ to, that she wasn’t the enemy, she was Bernadetta von Varley, Bernie-Bear, his classmate—

And what difference would it make? He’d had it out for her since the first day of class! He was probably enjoying having an excuse to kill her! ‘I am terribly sorry,’ he would say to Edelgard afterward, ‘but she was wearing a mask; I simply could not tell friend from foe. A horrible tragedy, milady…’

 _“Hubert?”_ Edelgard called out.

With her last ounce of strength, Bernadetta pulled off her mask. _“Hubert—it’s me—”_

Hubert looked down at her, shock registering on his mousy face. And then, to Bernadetta’s surprise, he crouched down and helped her up. “Keep your head elevated and breathe. The pain will subside.”

“Uh…”

 _“Lady Edelgard!”_ Hubert called out, rushing off to aid his liege.

Bernadetta did as Hubert said and forced one lungful of air down after another; a black mist curled out of her mouth with each ragged cough. But as he’d said, the pain was subsiding.

Her mind reeled. How was _Hubert_ here, and why was he a mouse? What had happened to the rest of the class? Were _they_ mice now, too?

She took one more rattling breath, coughing and sputtering as she forced the last of the miasma from her lungs. Her chest still hurt, her lungs ached, and her throat felt like someone had scraped it raw with sandpaper, but she could breathe now and her head was clearing.

That was, until a sharp steel blade slipped across her throat.

 _“My little friend here likes the way your blood tastes, little girl,”_ Kronya purred in her ear. _“I told it, ‘oh, don’t kill her, Edel will be_ so _sad,’ and it just says, ‘but I’m a thirsty little flower…’”_ She chuckled. _“Hey, Eeeeedeeelll! I’ve got your giiiirrrlllfriiieeeeend!”_ she called out.

Edelgard turned her head, spying Bernadetta and Kronya, her eyes widening with horror.

 _Please don’t let me die,_ Bernadetta pleaded. _Oh, Goddess, please don’t let me die here and make El watch—please, Goddess, anything but that! She doesn’t deserve to see that again! Don’t let her watch Bernie die, please, please, please!_ The Goddess had never answered any of her prayers in her life, not a single one, but maybe _this_ time, maybe she would answer, maybe just once, just this _once,_ she would answer, if not for Bernadetta herself than for El _—_

As though summoned by her prayer, a bolt of lightning screamed through the air, striking Kronya on the shoulder. Bernadetta felt the searing heat against her back, the tang of burnt air stinging her already-raw nostrils, and staggered forward on limp, jellylike legs, falling on all fours as she caught her breath. She thought she could hear one of Constance’s trademark haughty laughs wafting through the air amid the ringing in her ears.

 _“You’re just delaying the inevitable!”_ Kronya spat, flourishing her knife with one paw as her other arm, blackened and smoldering, hung limp at her side. _“Watch this, Edelgard! Watch her bleed!”_

The butt of a spear cracked against the back of her head and threw her to the ground, the knife falling from her paw. She scrambled for it, claws scrabbling at the stone tile floor, only for the mouse who’d struck her, a mouse with pale sandy fur and a bright mane of fiery hair, to swipe it up before she could grab it and toss it aside.

 _“Who the hell do you think you are?”_ Kronya spat at him.

The mouse brandished his spear with an elegant and prideful flourish. _“I,”_ he said with a confident grin and a sunny light in his eyes, _“am Ferdinand von Aegir!”_

* * *

Caspar looked up at the fading blossom of black magic hanging like a phantom in the air above the city. “Finally!” he exclaimed, cracking his knuckles. “Time to cause some distractions!”

“How are we going to get through the gate?” Linhardt asked.

“We’ll punch our way through!” Caspar said, hurrying for the southern gatehouse.

Linhardt sighed. “You’re a tactical mastermind to rival Claude,” he muttered, following behind him.

“Hey, I got an idea. Why don’t we climb the walls?” Matthias asked. “They don’t look that hard to climb, and we could clear out the archers to protect Squadron One—you know, Constance and Marianne are sitting ducks up there on their bat, I mean I’m sure they can dodge a few shots but—”

“Great idea!” Caspar shouted. _“Heads up, you pasty goons!”_ he cried out, taking a running leap at the wall. His claws curled into the gaps and cracks in the mottled, craggy stone, and suddenly, he found himself hanging much higher up than he’d expected. Who knew mice could jump so well? He was always finding new things about this body to be pleasantly surprised about!

He looked down at Linhardt, who was staring up at him with a bemused expression. _“C’mon, Lin! It’s easy!”_

An arrow zipped through the air and cut a sharp, stinging notch in his ear; Caspar looked up and saw a trio of archers staring down at him over the ramparts, and he realized that he was a sitting duck out here!

He hurriedly scurried to the side, scuttling crablike across the wall with his claws scraping against the uneven cracks in the masonry and his paw pads scraping against the stone. Three more arrows shot past him, one slicing a shallow, but stinging furrow in his shoulder.

A fireball shot up through the air, returning the archers’ volley and striking one of them in the face. Caspar spared a look down and saw Linhardt, his arms outstretched. _“Nice shot, Lin!”_

Soldiers poured out from the gatehouse, swarming like ants; Caspar had half a mind to jump back down, but Matthias was right—these archers had to be taken out! Besides, Matthias with his sword and Linhardt with his magic would be fine—it was up to him to take the ramparts!

He scurried upward, zigzagging across the wall’s craggy facade as the remaining two archers tried to get a bead on him. He heard one of them call for help. He grinned. A lot of good it’d do them—archers were shit in close quarters; as soon as he got within punching range, they’d be as good as dead!

A door popped open beside him and a helmeted mouse poked his head out. _“Hey, what are you—”_

He let out a surprised yelp as Caspar grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and yanked him out of the window, and then a trailing scream as he fell to the ground, his body cracking against the broken stone tiling.

At last, he felt his fingers curl over the ramparts and flung himself over the wall, landing on solid and thankfully-horizontal ground. The duo of archers whirled around to face him.

“Hey, guys! Missed me?” Caspar shouted, decking one in the face with a right hook and the other in the jaw with a left uppercut haymaker. They both fell to the floor like marionettes with their strings cut.

Another pair of archers scurried up the stairs, arrows already nocked to their bows, bowstrings drawn tight. Caspar ducked and one of the two arrows went sailing overhead; he swiped a javelin from a rack of weapons resting against the wall and flung it, impaling the archer.

The other arrow struck him in the shoulder, forcing him to stagger backward as the pain deadened his arm. He couldn’t let the archer get another arrow drawn—

The whole wall shook as the gatehouse below him erupted like a volcano, belching flames and smoke into the air. Caspar felt the tremor wrench him to the side and struggled to keep his footing; the archer wasn’t so lucky, though, and stumbled off the ramparts. What the hell was that? Some sort of bomb in the gatehouse?

He got as close as he could to the black plume of smoke wafting up and over the wall. Linhardt hadn’t been in the gatehouse, had he? He rushed to the outer edge of the ramparts, leaning over the waist-high barricade and looking down. _“Lin!”_

No sign of him outside the gatehouse—just a lot of limp bodies of armored mice lying on the ground. Shit. _Shit!_ Caspar rushed to the other side of the ramparts, to the edge overlooking the city. His heart dropped like a stone. The smoke stung his eyes. This had been the second explosion he’d heard, the second plume of smoke he’d seen rising from the walls. Were all the gatehouses booby-trapped? Were Byleth, Edelgard, Bernie, and the others okay, too?

 _“Linhardt!”_ he cried out, more than just the acrid smoke stinging his throat. The thought that Linhardt might have been caught in the blast was gut-wrenching. He couldn’t be gone—not him, not _Lin,_ Caspar didn’t want to think about having to live in a world without that lazy, annoying, obnoxious, irritating _best friend he’d ever had_ …

He peered through the smoke, coughing, and saw three mounted soldiers converging on the intersection in front of the ruined gatehouse. And there in the street, picking themselves up off the rubble-strewn ground, were two ragged and weary mice, one with a familiar little mane of green hair… His heart leaped. Linhardt was okay! _“I’m coming, Lin!”_ he shouted out. Now he just needed to find the stairs…

His ears twitched backward, in the direction of the telltale sound of another bow drawing taut. Two more archers were coming up behind him!

Before he could whirl around to face them, he felt two arrowheads bury themselves in his back, two blossoms of pain blending together into one hot, warm, burning wetness trickling down his cloak. He fell to the floor, struggling to wrench the arrows in his back free. At least these archers wouldn’t be aiming at Constance and Marianne anymore, though…

As one of the two archers nocked a fresh arrow and inched closer, evidently hoping to get in a point-blank shot, a massive icicle slammed into him, separating his head from his shoulders; the bloodstained spear of ice sailed onward, leaving the headless body to slump to the floor.

Distracted, the other archers looked up in the direction of the magic assault and took aim, giving Caspar the opportunity to rip the arrows free from his flesh and charge at them with a hoarse snarl of a battlecry. Make a hedgehog out of him, would they? He’d send them flying!

He jammed both arrowheads clutched in his paws into their necks and shoved the archers off the wall; their shots went wide. As their screams trailed off and cut short, he looked up at the stone sky overhead, squinting to try and make out Squadron One.

There they were—nearly invisible against the shadows, Bruce the bat with his black fur and leathery black wings and Constance and Marianne in their black robes, gliding in wide circles around the city. He waved to them. Almost as if on cue, he felt a rush of healing magic surge through his body, numbing the blossoms of pain in his back and restoring the feeling in his arm. _“Thanks, Marianne!”_ he called out. _“You’re a lifesaver!”_

He ransacked a cache of weapons for a hand axe and a shield, then headed on across the ramparts, spying a wooden scaffold clinging to the wall up ahead that he could use to descend to the street. Half the archers rushing toward him were struggling to aim their arrows at Squadron One; the other half were aiming at the one-man squadron fast approaching them.

 _“Who’s next?”_ Caspar bellowed, charging into the fray. _“Get in line!”_

* * *

Hapi stared up at the fading violet blossom in the sky. That was the signal. It was time to make mayhem.

“Ready?” Balthus asked her, laying a meaty paw on her shoulder.

She nodded. Ready as she could ever be, she guessed. But her paws anxiously gripped and kneaded the hem of her purloined mages’ robes. The monsters she called forth didn’t exactly listen to her or see her—or anyone else—as a friend, only as food and foes. Her very presence drove them mad, drove them to her—and here, with the stakes so high and with another enemy already pinning them down in one direction, calling upon this ‘power’ of hers could get her and everyone else killed.

“I still can’t believe you can summon monsters just by _sighing,”_ Annette said.

“Believe it, Chirpy. Comes in handy in a pinch. But _this_ pinch…”

“We’ll be fine. Just gotta get inside the walls before they make it here,” Balthus assured her. “What, worried they’ll _stop_ us?”

Hapi shook her head. Balthus was right. Nothing could stop the King of Grappling. “Don’t worry, B. It’s not that I care about you guys.”

She stared out into the darkness that stretched on down the corridor. She still didn’t know the upper limits of her ability—she’d been terrified to find out. Ever since she’d gained the power to summon monsters— _unwillingly—_ she’d taken great pains to keep her emotional responses to people under wraps. It was all she could do to roll her eyes sometimes. Let too much emotion in, get too heated, and the next thing she knew, a sigh would escape her lips and everyone around her would be dead.

It hadn’t always been like this. As a child, living in a little village hidden from the world, her Crest of Timotheos had allowed her to commune with animals of all shapes and sizes. They could understand her, and her them, and they could ask her questions, tell her things, do favors for her…

Everything had changed when she’d ran away from the village. When that woman Cornelia and her masked men had snatched her away and experimented on her, greedily drinking in all the knowledge that was to be gained from her hidden, secret Crest. When she’d been freed and taken to Abyss (one prison for another), the power of her Crest had been transformed by their twisted experiments from a blessing to a curse… and no one wanted anything to do with her anymore. Anyone who knew what she was, what she could do, ran for their lives at the sight of her—and rumors traveled quickly. Only Yuri, Balthus, and Constance, the Ashen Wolves, were brave enough to stick with her in spite of it all.

She wondered if _these_ dastards had been working with that woman. They sure seemed to really get a kick out of mucking with people’s Crests, between Edelgard and Lysithea. Maybe this was a chance for revenge.

Revenge. Poetic justice. At the thought, unbidden to her, though she wasn’t anywhere near ready, a long, loud, relieved sigh escaped her lips.

She clamped her paws over her snout. Shit! She hadn’t meant to do that yet!

Balthus laughed. “Now that’s what I’m talkin’ about! I bet you just summoned, like, a hundred cats with that one!”

“Oh, Goddess. Oh, fuck.” Hapi pulled at her hair. “Oh, fuck the Goddess. We gotta go.”

“Gotcha.” Balthus swept Annette up and headed for the northern gatehouse. “Don’t worry. I got a plan.”

“Oh, great,” Hapi muttered. “Balthus has a plan.”

“You don’t have to carry me around!” Annette protested. “It’s not like I’m a baby or anything…”

“Sorry. It’s just that you’ve got this sort of, I dunno, ‘baby’ energy,” Balthus said. “Like, I look at you, and I wanna protect you.”

“Aww.”

“But yeah, I can set you down. Sorry—”

“Wait a minute.” Hapi stopped Balthus. “B, keep carrying her. Chirpy, act like you’re injured.”

Annette nodded. Behind her mask, her eyes were probably lighting up. She curled up and grabbed her foot. _“Oh, my ankle! I sprained my ankle! It hurts…”_

“Yeah, exactly. Let’s go.”

Hapi rushed to the gate, Balthus and Annette in tow, and rapped on the door. _“Hey, anyone home?”_

Cradling Annette one-handed, Balthus rapped much harder on the door, shaking it with every tap of his knuckles against the solid steel-braced wood. “Open up! We got an injured mage here!” he bellowed.

A slot on the door slid open and a beady-eyed mouse peered out. “What’s all this racket?”

Annette gave her ankle a squeeze. “Aaauuuooohhh… my ankle,” she moaned. “I think I broke it… and these two don’t know healing spells… it hurts so much…”

“We gotta get her to a healer; she’s been walking on that thing all morning!” Balthus added. “It’s probably all fucked up and everything by now!”

“If we don’t get a healer now, she might never walk again,” Hapi added.

“Hmm.” The mouse on the other side of the door thought for a moment. “I’ll go send someone out.”

“No, no, no, no, let us _in!”_ Balthus said. “C’mon, we’re all on the same side!”

“What are your designations?” the mouse asked. “Haven’t seen you around before.”

“How the fuck would you know; we’re all wearing masks!” Hapi protested. She felt a telltale tremor in the ground trickle up her feet and run up her spine. Something big was coming. Something big was coming, and it was all her fault.

“Uh… I’m, uh, Biggs,” Balthus said, “and my friend here is Wedge… and this little lady I’m carrying is Jessie.”

“Smooth, B,” Hapi muttered under her breath. “Real smooth.”

“Biggs and Wedge, huh,” the mouse muttered suspiciously. “Thought I saw your names on the casualties list the other day. Edelgard got you.”

 _“Edelgard?_ That little wimp?” Balthus laughed. “She couldn’t kill her way out of a paper bag.”

“Rumors of our deaths have been greatly exaggerated,” Hapi said, struggling to keep her exasperation under wraps—the last thing she needed to let loose upon the world was _another_ sigh. “Now can you let us the fuck in or not?”

“Sure, sure. Just hold on. I know a guy who knows a guy in Sector 7-G who was friends with you two! I’ll let him know you’re alive; man, he’ll be so psyched!”

“Oh, no, don’t go all the way to Sector 7-G,” Hapi said. “Just… can we at least stay in the gatehouse? It’s cold out here.” The tremors were getting stronger, subtly stronger… no one else had probably noticed, but Hapi was hypersensitive to how the ground moved when she was summoning something big.

And this was _big._ At least a cat; maybe a dog. Maybe two. Maybe more.

“Fine, fine. Hold on a sec.” The mouse backed away and slid the slot closed. A few seconds later, a mechanical whirring sound filled the air and the door shuddered and began to rise.

Balthus, Hapi, and Annette rushed in as soon as they could fit under the door. “Oh, thank the Goddess,” Balthus sighed as soon as the door had slid back down and closed behind him. “You have no idea how—”

Hapi stared at him, horrified. All of the soldiers in the gatehouse looked at him.

“That’s a joke,” Hapi said, nudging him sharply in the side with her elbow. “He likes to joke about the Goddess, and being thankful to her, which none of us are.” She forced a laugh.

“Uh, yeah, uh, sorry,” Balthus said, chortling fakely. “I got what they call a real ‘politically incorrect’ sense of humor. Ask anyone who knows me! Anyone who knows Biggs. ‘That Biggs guy is so _offensive!’”_

“Yeah, this guy just offends people left and right. You guys wanna hear another joke?” Hapi asked, scanning the room for any sign that she might not need copious amounts of violence to get out of it alive. “The Church of Seiros! Ha, ha, ha, ha…”

A single cough echoed through the silent gatehouse. One of the soldiers started tapping on a metal contraption.

“I mean, what’s the deal with the Knights of Seiros?” she went on. “You know, I once heard they rescued a girl who’d been experimented on by a bunch of creepy dark mages for half her entire life, and you know what they did? Stuck her here in Abyss! Some ‘rescue,’ huh? And these are the _good_ guys?”

No response. Some of the soldiers started to reach for their swords.

“Actually, fuck this.” Hapi lifted her paw, conjured a cloud of dark miasma, and hurled it toward the soldiers. They panicked, struggling to draw their weapons as they gasped and choked. Balthus set Annette down and charged right through them, knocking them aside like billiard balls, and busted down the opposite door.

“Alright,” Balthus said. “They still don’t know we’re intruders. Let’s go!”

“Yeah.” Hapi rushed after him with Annette trailing behind her, adjusting her mask. “We probably don’t wanna be near the north wall when the cavalry comes to the rescue.” As if on cue, a larger tremor shook the ground.

And then the gatehouse exploded behind them. The next thing Hapi knew, she was lying flat on her front, covered with dust and soot and little flecks of stone, and her ears were ringing, and that was all she could hear.

What the _fuck_ had she summoned, a tiny dragon or something?

Balthus’ strong paws slipped underneath her and pulled her up. As he brushed her down and looked for wounds, she felt her hearing gradually return. For a few seconds, it sounded like he was speaking to her from underwater; then, gradually, his voice became less and less muffled. “…okay, Hap?”

“Fine,” she coughed as he healed a stinging scrape on her chin. “Thanks, buddy. The hell was that?”

Annette picked herself up and dusted herself off. For such a sweet kid, she was awfully resilient. “Dunno, I don’t see any monsters around.”

_“Hey!”_

A battalion of rat-mounted soldiers scurried up from both sides of the street, penning Hapi, Balthus, and Annette in. “More intruders,” the commander of the battalion spat. “Filthy vermin. Move out; warn the others!” he barked to his right-hand man. “Neo Shambhala is under siege!”

“Damn. Really thought we’d get away with that for a sec.” Balthus stood up and threw aside his cloak and mask. “Alright, you screwheads! Step right up and test your might against Balthus, the Almighty King of Grappling! And Hapi, the, uh… Hapi! And Annette.”

Hapi, Annette, and Balthus stood back-to-back-to-back against the battalion. This was stupid. They were all going to die. Fun.

The commander looked to his second-in-command, who hadn’t budged. “Hey! I gave you an order! Move out and warn the—”

The second-in-command rode up to his side and jabbed his lance into the commander’s chest, slaying him. “Nah. Not really feeling it. You guys are gonna have to take ‘em on your own,” he said in a very familiar voice as the deceased commander slid off his rat and fell to the street with a thump.

“Yuri, you son of a bitch!” Balthus shouted out, grinning ear-to-ear.

Yuri threw aside his helmet and cracked the reins of his rat as the soldiers, who’d all been primed to charge at Balthus, Hapi, and Annette, reconsidered their priorities and charged at him. Yuri danced around them, leading them astray as Hapi and Annette picked them off with blasts of dark miasma and gusts of wind. The battle was fierce, and the enemy’s spears came way too close for comfort way too many times, but soon enough, the battalion had been routed.

“Fancy running into you guys here,” Yuri said, offering Hapi a paw wreathed in healing magic to take care of her wounds. “I’m flattered you came all this way to rescue me. Where’s Constance?”

“What the fuck are you doing here, Yuri?” Hapi asked, gratefully taking his paw and climbing onto the back of his rat as Balthus and Annette took one of the others.

Yuri’s brow wrinkled. “…So you didn’t come here to rescue me.”

“Buddy, we didn’t even know you needed rescuing,” Balthus said, struggling with his mount’s reins, Annette clinging to his back. “C’mon! Giddyup!”

“Well, I don’t anymore, no thanks to you.”

Another tremor shook the ground. “Uh, yeah,” Hapi said, “about that…”

The wall shook and trembled, bits of masonry crumbling from its facade, and a bone-chilling mewl cut through the air as a large, pointy head covered in striped fur peaked above the ramparts. Screams rang out across the wall.

Yuri looked up at the cat peering down at the city streets from over the wall. “Whatever the hell you’re doing, Hapi, I love it!” Yuri lashed the reins of his rat yet again and dug his heels into its flanks. “Let’s make like a tree and get the fuck outta here!”

* * *

Hubert and Ferdinand guided the rest of Squadron Two away from the masses of soldiers gathered in the western side of the city, sneaking swiftly through back alleys until they reached a crumbling building near the southern edge of the city walls. Bernadetta was still slow on her feet, fatigued from the poisoned scratch on her arm and the sharp, burning pain in her lungs, and though Kronya’s blade hadn’t drawn any blood when she’d held it to her throat, the skin where the metal had pressed against still itched and burned like a rash. Winded, struggling to keep up, she fell behind, only to feel a strong arm sweep her off her feet. She looked up into Ferdinand’s eyes as he carried her aloft.

“Hubert… what are you doing here?” Edelgard asked her vassal, sounding half grateful and half upset.

“We reasoned that this place, where the largest cluster of Agarthan troops was, was their base of operations, and figured that one way or another, we would find you here,” Hubert said, carrying Kronya’s unconscious body over his shoulder and huffing from the exertion. “Either tearing through the enemy forces yourself or as a prisoner.”

“How surprised you must be to find me as both,” Edelgard quipped. “And why are you a mouse?”

Hubert looked down. “Apologies, my lady. It is a long story.”

As Hubert shepherded the others into the house and gave them space to lick their wounds, Ferdinand set Bernadetta down and cast a wary glance around the area, readying his spear. “Go on ahead, Bernadetta. I shall follow.”

Bernadetta crossed the threshold on shaking legs. She was relieved to find a place to hide away, relieved to set aside her bow and lie down for a moment, and even _more_ relieved to find Dorothea and Petra waiting for her.

She recognized those two mice right away. Dorothea’s fur was the same lustrous, chocolaty color of her hair, and the waterfall of loosely-curled ringlets cascading down her shoulders was unmistakable; though Petra’s sandy fur covered up her distinctive tattoos (if she still had them), her brilliant magenta mane, though it was dulled to a steely blue and was only half done-up in her traditional braids, was equally unmistakable.

Bernadetta forgot all her aches and pains save for the one in her heart, which was stronger than ever. As much as she’d grown to see Edelgard as a companion and friend, Dorothea and Petra had been the people she’d missed most of all down here in Abyss.

 _“Bernie-Bear!”_ Dorothea cried out, rushing to her side and wrapping her up in her arms. “Oh, Bern, it’s so good to finally see you! I’ve missed you…”

Bernadetta rested her head on Dorothea’s shoulder, letting herself melt into her warm, oaken-brown fur. “I missed you, too…” she sighed.

“It’s okay, it’s okay. There, there. I’ve got you.” Dorothea gently stroked her fur and nuzzled her neck. “Has Edie been taking good care of you down here?”

Bernadetta nodded.

“We have great relief to see that you and Edelgard are being safe,” Petra said, resting a gentle paw on her back. “We had much worry. Ferdinand especially; he was having so much concern it was making him ill.”

“R-Really? For _me?”_ Bernadetta glanced at Ferdinand.

“Well, er…” Ferdinand uncomfortably scratched at the side of his neck and glanced away from her. “I have indeed been very worried about you, Bernadetta. Lady Edelgard I knew could take care of herself, but _you…_ I was quite afraid for you. Thank the Goddess you are safe now!”

Bernadetta giggled. “I actually think Edelgard’s needed my help more than I’ve needed hers,” she said.

“Isn’t there something else you wanted to tell Bern, Ferdie?” Dorothea asked him with a sharp, stern look in her eyes.

Ferdinand looked even more uncomfortable. “Yes, yes, um—of course. I have something very, er…”

Hubert glanced through the window one last time before drawing the blinds shut. “All clear from this angle. Ferdinand, check the other side.”

“Yes, sir, Hubert!” Ferdinand said, marching off to keep watch, evidently relieved enough to have been called away to not mind taking orders from Hubert of all people.

Dorothea pulled Bernadetta down to the floor. “You’re hurt; let me take a look at your wounds.” Bernadetta obliged, shedding her cloak and gingerly unwrapping the bandage from around her forearm. The scratch still stung like a dozen wasp stings in the same spot, even moreso when it was exposed to open air. A glowing aura of healing magic wreathed Dorothea’s paws as she set to work, and slowly but surely, the pain began to fade to a dull buzz.

There were two other mice in Hubert’s safehouse that Bernadetta couldn’t recognize—a large one, tall enough to give Balthus a run for his money, with brown and silver fur, and a shorter one with a long pink mane done up in pigtails. But though they were unfamiliar to Bernadetta, Dimitri, Claude, and Lysithea recognized them right away.

“Dedue,” Dimitri gasped, breathless from shock, as he approached the larger one. Dedue—Bernadetta recognized that name. From sheer height alone, not to mention the omnipresent stony scowl on his face, he was nearly as intimidating as Hubert, though lacking his unique sinister charm.

But the paw Dedue laid on Dimitri’s face, gently brushing the bandage wrapped over his eye, was anything but stony or threatening. “Your Highness… you are injured.”

“It is nothing,” Dimitri insisted. “I am sorry to have dragged you into this.”

“I would brave the fields of Ailell for you, Your Highness… you need not apologize to me for anything.”

“Ah, Hilda,” Claude said, flashing a winning grin to the pink-haired one. “What brings you to fair Mousehaven?”

“You, you idiot!” Hilda cried out, exasperated. She stomped over to him. “I have been walking around these tunnels for a whole _day!_ If I could sweat, I’d be filthy—Oh, hi, Lysie!” she chirped, rushing over to Lysithea and hugging her. “Where’s that ribbon I gave you?”

Lysithea scratched at the fur around her neck. “I got rid of it.”

“But it was so adorable!”

“I don’t _want_ to be adorable; I’m not a child!”

“Oh, please, if a girl can’t be adorable, then what’s the _point?”_

Hubert stepped away from the windows. “We’ll wait for the alarms to stop ringing before we advance. Now, to pass the time…” He looked to the unconscious mouse lying on the floor. “I think it is time for some information-gathering.”

Kronya stirred and let out a weak moan as Ferdinand tied her down. “Allow me to handle this,” Ferdinand said to Hubert. “I believe one catches more flies with honey than with vinegar.”

“The two of you, working together,” Edelgard mused, watching Ferdinand and Hubert be civil to each other for once in their lives. “If you were not my allies, I would be terrified at the mere thought.”

Ferdinand crouched at Kronya’s side. “Hello, er…”

“Kronya,” Hubert offered.

“Kronya,” Ferdinand said sweetly as Kronya’s eyes fluttered open. “I do not believe we have been properly introduced. I am Ferdinand von Aegir, and I am _very_ sorry about cracking the back of your skull open with my spear.”

Kronya laughed and spat in his face. “You shouldn’t be, you dirt-scrounging idiot.”

Ferdinand wiped the spit from his cheek. “Now, now, Kronya. We can do this the easy way, or we can do it the hard way. I am a gentleman and a noble of the highest breeding, so of course, I would like to do things the easy way.” He looked up at Hubert. “But my friend here, whom I believe you know, is much less of a gentleman, and I mean that with no disrespect to him.”

Hubert scowled. Bernadetta couldn’t help but notice that as a mouse, he had lost nearly everything save for his baleful glare and raspy voice that had made him threatening. He wasn’t much taller than the average mouse; he was covered in soft, plushy fur; he had a physique that called to mind a teddy bear; and whenever he tried to pull off one of his trademark sinister grins, they showed off his adorably mousy teeth.

“So,” Ferdinand concluded, “would you like to tell everything to me, the brave and shining knight who wishes to be your friend, or would you prefer to speak to Hubert, the dastardly dark knight who wishes to chop off all your fingers and toes and feed them to you?”

Kronya merely laughed. “The ‘good knight, bad knight’ routine? _Seriously?_ Is that all you have, Ferdinand von Aegir?”

Hubert took a step toward her.

 _“I’ll talk, I’ll talk, I’ll talk!”_ Kronya bawled, shrieking at the top of her lungs. “I’m so, so, sorry; I never meant to hurt any of you; it was never meant to go this far; I was supposed to stay on the surface and help Vejovis and Solon turn people into mice for their experiments but then he turned _me_ into a mouse and that was never supposed to happen and _please, please, please don’t feed me my own fingers!”_

Ferdinand motioned for Hubert to back away. “There, there, Kronya.” He patted her on the shoulder. “I will not let Hubert harm you. Now, why in the Goddess’ name would your _ally_ of all people turn you into a mouse?”

“I-I dunno,” Kronya said, sniffling. “He’s crazy. I… I think he just wants to turn as many people into mice as possible.”

“It doesn’t sound crazy to me at all,” Hubert said, glancing at Edelgard and Lysithea in turn. “All scientists require test subjects… some quite a few.” Bernadetta suspected he was referring to Edelgard’s brothers and sisters, and possibly Lysithea’s as well, if she’d had any. “He has already used all of the Agarthans down here, it seems.”

“He doesn’t sound like a very good ally to me,” Ferdinand said. “I do not know how they do things in Agartha, but here in Fódlan, allies trust and protect one another, not use each other for… science experiments against their will.”

Edelgard fidgeted uncomfortably.

“And that is why,” Kronya responded, still teary-eyed, “you are all so very, very stupid.”

“What of the plot to replace Lady Edelgard?” Hubert asked.

“I think it’s obvious why they aim to kill me,” Edelgard said.

“Kill?” Hubert shook his head. “No, Lady Edelgard. What they wish to do is much worse than kill. Solon says he has created some kind of creature that can transfer its soul to other bodies…”

“Living or dead,” Kronya said, a faint smile flickering on her face. “Solon says living bodies are preferable—less resource-intensive or something—but corpses are less likely to fight back.”

“I… see,” Edelgard said, shaken.

“The Plague Rat,” Dimitri muttered. “He said to me… his flesh was temporary, but his soul was eternal. They wanted to put that _thing’s_ mind in your body, Edelgard?”

“You have something you haven’t earned, Edel,” Kronya said. “He lost something he deserved to have. We’re correcting an imbalance in the universe.”

“You speak of him as though he were a person,” Dimitri said. “That _thing_ was not…”

“He _was,_ once. A couple dozen bodies ago…”

“So what of the weapon?” he asked her. “What of the object that Myson and the Plague Rat took the other night? What use is it to their plans?”

“Weapon?” Kronya looked nonplussed. “What weapon?”

“Perhaps it’s not a weapon,” Claude said, “but it’s something important. Important enough that they’d brag about it. What did they take, and where is it?”

Bernadetta felt a suspicious stone settle in her stomach. If it wasn’t a weapon, then why had Matthias kept saying it was one? Why had he described what sounded like a Hero’s Relic? What could he be hiding from them?

“You said Myson took it?” Kronya rolled her eyes. “That sounds like a question _he’d_ be able to answer, then. You’ll probably be able to find him with Solon in the east side of the city, near the citadel. Happy hunting!”

Outside, muffled screams mingled with the omnipresent shrieking of the alarm bells. “What’s going on out there?” Edelgard asked.

Byleth rushed to the window, pulling aside the curtains. She smiled, but only briefly. “It’s a giant cat!” she exclaimed. “That’s… bad,” she added, her initial elation quickly fading.

“And there’s our distraction,” Claude said, rising to his feet and collecting his bow. “We move east. Come on, while they’re preoccupied with the rampage.”

Bernadetta wished so badly that she could just stay behind and rest a bit more, but she had to see this through. This was her and Edelgard’s adventure to conclude. And besides, there was a giant cat out there that would probably come this way and kill her if she stayed behind.

“Wait—what about _me?”_ Kronya wailed, struggling against the ropes that bound her wrists and ankles.

“Oh, don’t worry,” Hubert sneered as he and the others headed for the exit. “The cat is still far from the south side of the city. Plenty of time for your… _allies_ to rescue you before it comes this way.”

Bernadetta waited for the others to filter through the door, but paused on her way out and looked over her shoulder at Kronya. The assassin looked genuinely terrified. Her chest heaved; her eyes were wide and wet; and in spite of everything, Bernadetta felt _sorry_ for her. It was because Kronya had attacked her that she was tied up like this now, and if she was killed in the chaos while trapped here, helpless, then that death would be on her paws…

And so she took an arrow from her quiver, snapped off the arrowhead, and tossed it to the floor, far away from where Kronya sat.

“You can c-cut yourself free with that,” she told the dumbfounded, bemused assassin, trying to sound as brave as Edelgard despite the tremor in her voice, “b-but if you ever come after us again…” She nocked another arrow and fired; the arrowhead grazed Kronya’s nose and left a bloody scratch across its tip as it embedded itself against the floor. “I-I’ll kill you myself.”

Kronya just continued to stare up at her, trussed and helpless, eyes wide with an emotion Bernadetta couldn’t recognize. Her heart pounding in her chest like the beat of a hummingbird’s wings, Bernadetta beat a hasty retreat and hurried out the door to rejoin her friends outside.

As soon as she caught up with the others, Edelgard grabbed her and yanked her down to the ground, hiding the both of them behind a worn-down wooden fence. _“Get down,”_ Edelgard hissed. The others had all taken cover, too; Byleth was crouched beside them, still as a statue, a hard and serious look in her slate blue-gray eyes and a paw tightly gripping the hilt of her sword as she stared out at the procession leading itself down the street they had been about to cross.

Half a dozen soldiers and mages riding armored rats filed down the road in two orderly columns, and at their rear, muzzled and bound in butcher’s twine like a prisoner, was a pale mouse with a long, sandy mane and a rat’s skull painted pitch black perched atop his head like a helmet as though he were a miniature imitation of the Plague Rat. Scraps of spiky black armor clung to his body and to the rat he rode on, and in one paw he carried a farmer’s scythe with a well-honed steel blade, its curved edge already darkened with blood.

At the sight of the demonic mouse at the back of the procession, Bernadetta felt her blood run cold. Edelgard was petrified with shock. Even Hubert was afraid. _“What,”_ he gasped, _“is the_ Death Knight _doing here?”_

The Death Knight. The black-armored reaper, implacable and immovable until his lust for blood triggered, who’d kidnapped Flayn last month and carried her deep into the catacombs of Garreg Mach, commanding with monstrous intensity the Flame Emperor’s soldiers as the Black Eagles had rushed to the girl’s rescue. Still as a statue, unless one dared to cross him—then in a flash of brutal violence, whoever had dared would never dare anything again. Bernadetta had had _nightmares_ about this demon after seeing the red eyes of his death’s-head mask bleeding through the shadows. She had hoped she would never have to see him anywhere again _but_ in her dreams.

But here he was. In the flesh, the image of death itself, and fighting on the _Agarthans’_ side.

As if today couldn’t get any worse…

* * *

The life of a mercenary had few certainties. One such certainty was that one could never depend on a good night’s sleep, and so Shamir Nevrand, mercenary-cum-Knight of Seiros, had trained herself to ensure that she would never have to depend on one. She had taught herself to fit eight to ten hours of rest into one or two hours of sleep, which could be taken at any time of day. In fact, she had a particular knack for falling asleep at the instant a church bell tolled to mark the hour, should she choose to, and wake up the instant the bells tolled again two hours later.

It wasn’t a skill that won many bar bets, but it had kept her alive, and that was more beneficial to her than any wager she could win.

This afternoon, after another long night and longer morning making sure no more students went missing, Shamir had retired for a quick cat nap, but found herself awakened by something other than bells.

It was a squeak.

She sat up, instantly awake, instantly alert, her hand instantly flying to the dagger under her pillow.

There was another squeak. It sounded vaguely familiar, or at least as familiar as a squeak could sound.

Shamir sighed and slipped out of bed, casting a glance around her quarters as she slipped on her jacket. “Hello? Someone there?”

Another squeak cut through the air. It sounded like a voice, faint and as high pitched as a cheap penny whistle, calling out her name.

“Hello?” She closed her eyes to better hear it.

_“Shamir! Shamiiiir! Behind you! On the desk!”_

She went to her desk, and on its polished wood surface were two mice, one with brown fur and the other a sandy blonde, both standing on their hind legs, both wearing tiny clothes, one wielding a tiny sword and the other wielding a tiny axe. Their fur and clothes were a little ragged, a little dirty, a little bloody, but then again, everything about them was little.

The blonde mouse waved its forepaws in the air. _“Shamir! It’s me, Catherine! Alois and I got turned into mice!”_

Shamir looked down at the mice. The blonde one certainly did have something of a Catherine-esque swagger to her. She sat down and rested her elbows on the desk, giving the mice a good look.

“…Huh,” she said.

 _“That’s all you have to say?”_ Alois piped up. _“Not_ ‘mice _to see you’ or ‘aren’t you two a little short for Knights of Seiros’ or_ ‘rat’s _off to you for making it back in one piece’—”_

“Yes,” Shamir said. That was _definitely_ Alois, unfortunately, so she could be pretty certain the other one was indeed Catherine. She held her upturned palm in front of her. “Hey, Catherine.”

Alois chuckled. _“More like_ Mouse _therine—”_

“Stop talking.”

Catherine climbed onto her palm, one hind leg limping a bit. Her claws dug into her skin—sharply, but not painfully so, more like getting pricked by fresh pine needles. _“Aren’t you a sight for sore eyes, Shamir! I’m glad to see they haven’t gotten to you yet.”_

“I’m glad they haven’t, too,” Shamir said. Her friend was a mouse. A talking mouse wearing tiny clothes and carrying a tiny sword. That threw her for a loop, though she couldn’t say she hadn’t expected this. “Good to see you again. You okay?”

 _“Ugh… the map we used to get back was a little, uh… innacurate,”_ Catherine said. _“We ran into some unexpected resistance, but we’re okay. You’re taking this well.”_

“When you went missing the other night, I figured you were either a mouse, dead, or a dead mouse.” She reached out and ran her fingernail between the mouse’s ears. She wasn’t totally sure how to handle mice since, like most people, she was more used to treating them as pests and not pets, but guessed that like all furry things, they enjoyed being scratched and petted. “Glad you’re not dead. How did this happen?”

Catherine let out a relaxed sigh and sank into her hand, proving Shamir right. _“It’s a long story—”_

Alois picked up his own tail. _“A long_ tail, _you might say—”_

 _“And we’re in a hurry,”_ she continued, giving an exasperated glare to her counterpart, _“so you need to take us to Lady Rhea immediately. We don’t have time to tell this story twice!”_ With that, she dashed up Shamir’s sleeve, claws pricking her skin, and popped up under her collar, perching herself neatly on the side of her neck.

“Hey. Watch it,” Shamir cautioned her, feeling a little bit of heat rise to her cheeks at the thought of how easily Catherine had slipped under her clothes.

She made for the door. Alois leaped after her, his claws snagging on the hem of her jacket. _“Wait! Don’t forget about me!”_


	11. Three Mouses, Part Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Alliance of Four Mouses continues its campaign to crush Those Who Slither in the Dark at their stronghold at Mousehaven, but will their united front be strong enough to withstand the shocking revelations waiting for them within the Agarthan citadel?

The Death Knight was one of Edelgard’s.

That wasn’t to say he was a tool or a weapon to her. Not _just_ one, anyway. The _Death Knight_ himself was a tool. Jeritza von Hrym was not.

She had found him as a boy, scarred and traumatized, broken in body and mind, and had taken him in, provided him a home and an outlet for his alter ego in exchange for his service to her goals. As Jeritza von Hrym, he was intense, but ultimately harmless. As the Death Knight, though, he only cared for shedding blood. He had a tendency to sit back and watch until he was provoked—when Edelgard had first deployed him at the Holy Tomb three months ago, he had sat in the center of the grand hall on his steed, as if daring one of her classmates to strike him. In a way, he was Edelgard’s last resort.

And here he was, somehow, just as much a mouse as everyone else.

 _“What,”_ Hubert gasped, _“is the_ Death Knight _doing here?”_

That was surely the question on everybody’s mind, but most of all on Edelgard’s. She didn’t recall allowing the Agarthans the use of the Death Knight again. She supposed they could have kidnapped him themselves, though—after all, he was _her_ murderous servant, and they had very clearly severed ties with her and no doubt planned to take every asset she’d relied on for themselves. Since the Death Knight’s true identity had been uncovered and Jeritza had had to go into hiding, Edelgard hadn’t had much contact with him—he could have been snatched away and brought down here weeks ago. Perhaps the Plague Rat had made him his lieutenant? But that didn’t explain the muzzle…

She studied Jeritza carefully. He was mounted on a harnessed rat and trussed up like a hog with a muzzle placed over his mouth and a scythe clasped in his paw—no, Edelgard noticed, _tied to_ his paw. That confirmed it. He wasn’t here of his own free will.

“They’ve captured him,” she replied. “They must have taken him down here some time after Jeritza’s cover was blown.”

“Jeritza? The scary fencing instructor?” Bernadetta asked, quivering. “Wh-What does _he_ have to do with this?”

“The Death Knight was his alter ego,” Hubert replied, giving her an incredulous look. “Did you somehow _miss_ that?”

“I-I’m sorry,” Bernadetta stammered, “b-but I—I guess I miss a lot of stuff when I’m holed up in my room, huh?”

“But what’s he doing here?” Byleth asked. Edelgard couldn’t help but notice the grim look in her eyes. Byleth had never seen the Death Knight fight, as far as Edelgard knew—and yet somehow the steely, sharp edge of her glare spoke to an intimate knowledge of what he was capable of. Perhaps she’d sparred with Jeritza when he had still been undercover as a professor.

“Clearly, they want him to kill for them,” Edelgard said. And it seemed they had no desire to take ‘no’ for an answer.

“I suppose he can take care of their cat problem,” Hubert said. As if on cue, the cat menacing the northern side of the city let out a terrible yowl that shook Edelgard to her core.

Edelgard watched the procession round the corner of the street and their prisoner slip out of sight. She felt a terrible pang of guilt that _all_ of her allies had gotten caught up in this deadly travesty. She poked her head up above the fence she’d taken cover behind and took stock of the rest of the expanded Squadron Two all hesitantly slipping out from under the cover they’d taken. “We cannot let them cut our diversion short,” she said. “…But I think we can turn this to our advantage. Professor, signal to the others to go eastward. Hubert, Bernadetta, Petra, follow me.”

“What? Where are we going?” Bernadetta asked.

“Lady Edelgard,” Hubert said, “do not do anything rash. Remember, the Agarthans do not need you alive for their plans—the Plague Rat may still possess your corpse.”

Edelgard looked to the corner Jeritza had vanished behind. “Nothing rash, Hubert,” she said. “We’re going to turn the Death Knight to our side.”

“Lady Edelgard, that is ridiculous!” Ferdinand protested. “He is a demonic killing machine—and he is the one who kidnapped Flayn!”

“I’m with Ferdie here,” Dorothea said. “You can’t be serious.”

“Is Edelgard ever _not_ being serious?” Petra asked her. “But this plan is frightening to me.”

Byleth shook his head. “I agree. I can’t let you do that, Edelgard. We have to keep pushing northeast for the citadel.”

Edelgard acquiesced to her teacher. She couldn’t explain that Jeritza wouldn’t harm her without having to answer some _very_ uncomfortable questions. To everyone else here, he was a monster. “Yes, Professor.”

The alliance pressed eastward, and Edelgard tried to leave her regret behind, as she’d always done in the past. But this time, she could feel it following her.

Dimitri slipped to her side. _“El, what were you thinking back there?”_ he whispered to her. _“Going after the Death Knight? Our plan has gone wrong enough already—putting yourself in danger like that will only make things worse.”_

Edelgard bristled at his attempt to play the part of an overprotective older brother and picked up her pace to further distance herself from him. “Making up for lost time, are we?”

Dimitri’s face fell. “Just… take care of yourself.”

“Cheer up, you two,” Claude said. “See, our plan’s working! All the troops are heading north and leaving us alone!”

He was right—what little resistance they met was easy enough to cut down, so Edelgard pressed onward. Still, something bothered her. Something here wasn’t right—there was something eerily wrong about this city. Was it her nerves, her proximity to her ancient enemy… or was there a danger lurking here none of them had accounted for? Or was it both?

And then the city exploded.

Fire erupted from the buildings lining the street; glass shattered, debris flew into the air and fell like stinging hail. Edelgard felt Hubert throw himself over her to shield her from the wood and stone fragments pelting the street.

Hubert helped Edelgard back onto her feet once the shockwaves shaking the ground settled. “Apologies, Lady Edelgard,” he said, brushing bits of stone from her fur.

“No need to apologize, Hubert. If not for you, I could have been injured. And you?”

Hubert winced. “A few bruises, but I hardly feel them,” he lied. “Knowing that you are safe is all that matters.”

Edelgard looked around. Dedue had done the exact same thing to Dimitri as Hubert had done to her and was now sheepishly helping the prince to his feet, which brought a slight smile to her face. Everyone else seemed relatively unharmed, but the buildings flanking them were in ruins, flames and smoke pouring from their broken windows. In an instant, this block of the city had fallen into ruin.

“Is everyone alright?” Byleth called out. One by one, the rest of the squadron signed off and picked themselves up, battered and bruised and a little bloody, but alive.

Edelgard looked toward Bernadetta, worried, but Hubert wouldn’t let her leave his side. Much to her relief, she seemed unharmed, though dust and ash had settled on her fur; Ferdinand rushed to her side and helped her up. Debris trickled out of her messy hair as he tended to her. Edelgard found herself holding her breath, and didn’t exhale until she heard Bernadetta faintly mumble to Ferdinand that she was okay.

Amid the crackling flames and shifting foundations of the ruined buildings, a disturbing sound reached Edelgard’s ears—pleas for help. A mouse wreathed in flames staggered out of what had once been a doorway, every inch of him alight, and with a horrible scream, he fell to the ground, motionless except for the ravenous flames licking at his body.

Dorothea stared at the burned soldier, her eyes fixed on his charred and still-aflame corpse, morbidly entranced. Petra had to pull her away from the macabre sight.

“I’ve never heard of any army causing damage like this so easily,” Ferdinand said, shaken. “What in the Goddess’ name was that?”

“What have they done?” Dimitri asked, aghast. “Are they really going to destroy their own city just to stop us?”

“It’s not their own city,” Claude pointed out.

“But it’s their own men they’re endangering! What is the sense of that? Who would risk burning their own soldiers to stop us?”

Edelgard looked up and eastward. The eastern side of the city rose up on an artificial hill—buildings built on top of buildings, terraces rising in tiers and connected by sweeping ramps, winding staircases, and ladders, fortified with walls and scaffolding to form a makeshift fortress within a fortress. That was the Agarthans’ citadel. And somewhere within, Edelgard knew, was their leader, the ‘weapon’ Matthias had spoken of… and likely, the Plague Rat as well. She knew from her studies that citadels were the most difficult part of a city to conquer—there had been records of these fortresses holding out for months after their surrounding city had fallen.

“We’ll find out,” she said, “when we finish conquering this city. Onward.”

“Yes.” Dimitri nodded. He took a deep, shaky breath and shook his head as though to wring disturbing thoughts from his mind. “We must not let this senseless violence continue.”

* * *

Caspar forced his way down the maze of scaffolding and ladders clinging to the inside of the city’s southern wall, cutting down any soldier in his path, burying his axe in their bodies, bashing them with his shield, throwing them off the wooden scaffold to the street below. He spared as many glances as he could to the area beyond the ruined gatehouse—where Matthias and Linhardt stood, back-to-back against a squad of mounted soldiers and struggling to defend themselves against the longer reach of their foes’ lances and spears.

Linhardt was doing his best to drive back the enemies and keep his comrade alive, alternating between conjuring blasts of fire and gusts of wind at the soldiers and casting healing spells on Matthias. He himself, though, had precious little energy to devote to his own protection: When an errant spear pierced his leg and sent him falling to his knees, Caspar felt a rush of hot anger rise in his chest. If he could see red, he’d be seeing red—Linhardt was _his_ friend, and it was supposed to be _him_ down there with him! _He_ should’ve been down there protecting him!

He threw that anger into every swing of his axe as he continued his descent. The scaffolding shook and swayed, nearly throwing him off it; he looked down and saw a few soldiers taking their axes to the wooden beams as though they were felling trees. There were still about half a dozen soldiers chasing him down this scaffolding—were those guys down there going to kill their comrades just to get to _him?_

The scaffolding lurched again and fell. Caspar felt his feet slip as the platform he stood on upended itself and found himself falling through the air. He braced himself and felt a blossom of pain so intense it was nearly deafening in his shoulder as he hit the cold stone ground. The scaffolding collapsed on top of him in a shower of timber, but he opened his eyes to find himself surprisingly un-crushed: A pair of wooden beams, snapped in half, had formed a sort of A-shape over him that had kept the heavier pieces of wood from landing on top of him. Most of the soldiers weren’t so lucky.

His entire left side hurt as he pulled himself free of the wreckage; his leg felt like someone had beaten all his muscles into a paste, and the less said about his shoulder and arm, the better. Still clutching his axe, he limped at full speed toward the soldiers menacing his friend. _“Hey, uglies! Over here!”_ he shouted out, scraping his throat. _“Come and get some!”_

One of the mounted soldiers turned to him, scoffed, and diverted his attention back to Linhardt—but it was just the distraction Linhardt needed to tear his chest open with a burst of razor-sharp air.

 _“Yeah! That’s what you get for ignoring me!”_ Caspar told the fallen soldier.

Linhardt flashed a weak grin that was more of a grimace at the sight of him and waved his paw; Caspar felt a rush of warm, numbing healing magic wash over him. His bones snapped back into place, his muscles knitted themselves back together, and though he still felt like shit, at least he wasn’t limping.

Matthias barely parried a strike from the last remaining soldier; the errant spearhead slipped and struck Linhardt in the back. With surprise widening his eyes, he slumped over and fell to the ground.

 _“Lin!”_ Caspar cried out. He threw his axe at the soldier, striking him on the head with the blunt end and knocking him out, and rushed to his friend’s side. “Lin, say something!” The wound in his back was shallow, but it was one of many, and Caspar knew that Linhardt wasn’t the kind of guy who could take a lot of punishment.

Linhardt’s eyes fluttered open as Caspar rolled him onto his side. _“Ugh, battle… what a pain…”_ he gasped, his breathing labored.

“Lin…” Caspar swallowed a lump in his throat and forced back a sniffle. No way was he going to cry in front of his friend, but he sure was glad Linhardt wasn’t dead yet! “Any chance you could, uh… heal yourself?”

Linhardt shook his head. “Haven’t… learned that lesson yet.”

“Well, hurry up!”

“Hard trick to get right… turning your own magic inward like that…” A weak grin split bloodied lips. “Don’t suppose you’ve been practicing some spells behind my back, Cas?”

“Just hang on. If Squad One is still in this area, Marianne’s gonna spot you and heal you up from the air.”

“Don’t worry,” Matthias said, “I think we’re in the clear now. Besides, just a couple of scratches—”

“Shut up!” Caspar snarled. “Dammit… should’ve had _you_ scale the wall…” He and Linhardt were a team; if they’d stayed close instead of splitting up, his friend’s blood wouldn’t be dripping onto his paws…

“Uh, yeah, I’d have been happy to,” Matthias said, which was even more infuriating. “Should’ve just asked me to go on ahead instead of jumping right into the thick of it; y’know, mice are really good at climbing stuff and I like to think I’m a lot better at it than most. You know, I once climbed a chand—”

This guy was _really_ annoying. How could Edelgard stand him?

Caspar tried his best to ignore him and helped Linhardt to his feet. “Yeah, yeah, sure, super good. Let’s find shelter before more goons show up.” He hated running away just as much as Linhardt hated being in the thick of it, but right now, his friend’s needs came first.

Linhardt’s head flopped onto Caspar’s shoulder. To say Caspar was doing all the work of standing for him was an understatement. He was as limp as a rag doll, which somehow made him feel a _lot_ heavier. Caspar was used to having to pull Linhardt’s weight for him, but not in a situation this serious. Dead weight was a lot harder to carry.

No, not dead, _almost_ dead. No, not even _almost_ dead. Caspar didn’t want to think like that. _Half_ dead. That was better.

Linhardt nuzzled his neck. “Hey, Cas… you’re soft… warm…” he mumbled. “Could get used to this…”

With the unique and oddly cold feeling of Linhardt’s nose tickling the side of his neck, Caspar felt his heart leap into his chest and his entire face set itself on fire. “Um… o-okay?” he mumbled back, not quite sure what to say. “H-Hang in there, buddy.”

At least some life seeped back into Linhardt’s body, though, and he managed to stand up with only most of Caspar’s weight supporting his, which made hauling him around a lot easier.

The alarm bells kept blaring as a deafening yowl and hiss rippled through the air, sending a violent shiver of fear up Caspar’s spine from the tip of his tail all the way up to his brain.

Matthias ran ahead to the nearest house and poked his head in through the door, then slipped inside. Caspar heard a shout ring out and fall silent just as suddenly. Matthias poked his head back out. _“Quick, in here! Hurry!”_

Casapr rushed for the door with Linhardt stumbling along beside him. Just as he came close, he felt an arrow zip past him, slicing a little slit in his clothes, and another bury itself in the back of his leg. He lost his footing, stumbled, and fell; Matthias caught his outstretched paw, gripped his wrist, and yanked him along.

“Phew,” Matthias said, shutting the door behind them and wiping the blood from his sword on his robes. “That was a close one! I don’t think I’ve ever had a one that was that close, actually, except for all those run-ins with the Plague Rat. I mean, close for you, I guess.”

Caspar gritted his teeth, yanked the arrowhead out of his leg, and tore a strip of cloth from his robes to wrap around the wound. “Dammit…” he hissed. Hapi’s distraction was working exactly as planned, probably, but all he’d managed to do was take down a couple archers. He had let the Professor down.

No time to wallow about that, though. He found a table and hauled Linhardt onto it. “Don’t worry, I got you,” he assured him, cutting open his robes to assess the damage. “Let’s take a look at your injuries.”

Thankfully, it wasn’t as bad as he’d feared. Some deep and oozing gashes, but a lot of other shallower scratches. Still, the worse wounds had to be staunched—Linhardt had probably lost a lot of blood already. Caspar may not have been a healer, but he knew how to wrap a bandage, although that was where his medical expertise began and ended. He started ripping up Linhardt’s cloak. “Hey, Matthias. Help me make some bandages!”

Matthias sheathed his sword and rushed to help him. “Gotcha. Aw, see, those wounds don’t look too bad. I think we’re gonna make it out of here!”

“Yeah. Just wish we could’ve done more,” Caspar said as he tightened and knotted a ragged swatch of cloth around Linhardt’s thigh. He fumbled with the knot, nervous energy burning all the way to his fingertips.

Linhardt winced. “Ugh… not so tight,” he whined.

“I think we did plenty out there,” Matthias said. “When your knight friends show up, the gatehouse is gonna be wide open for ‘em, and that’s great, right?”

“Yeah, you’re right! We’ve cracked this city wide open like an egg!” Caspar hastily finished patching Linhardt up. “You okay?”

Linhardt yawned. “Sleepy.”

In other words, back to normal. But then again, didn’t people get really tired before they died? “Just stay with us, Lin. Stay awake.”

“As if I could fall asleep with all this racket…”

One of the house’s windows shattered. _“They’re in here!”_ Caspar heard a soldier shout. The door rattled and shook, an ominous crack running up it.

“Oops. Yeah, I guess it was pretty obvious we’d picked this house to hide in, huh?” Matthias wondered aloud.

“Shit. We gotta regroup with the others.” Caspar helped Linhardt off the table. “Can you walk?”

“I doubt it.”

He sighed. “Alright, hold on,” he said, lifting Linhardt onto his back.

Matthias rushed to the window and cut down the soldier trying to climb through it with a slash of his sword, then hurried across the room. “If we slip out the back door and head north, maybe we’ll run into the others.”

“Hope their plan’s going better than ours.”

The front door burst open as Caspar raced out the back door after Matthias with Linhardt clinging to his back. They hurried up the back roads, zigzagging through the enemy soldiers’ ranks. The opposing army was already in disarray—Caspar could see that a lot of them were rushing north to deal with Hapi’s cat rather than attack him.

“Let’s steal new uniforms,” Matthias said, “and blend in with the bad guys again. They won’t attack their own men, right?”

Three sharp cracks and deafening booms rang out. The ground shook. Caspar glanced over his and Linhardt’s shoulder and saw the house he’d just run out of erupt in a shower of flames and debris.

“That’s two buildings we’ve been in that have blown up,” Linhardt observed with surprisingly cool detachment, resting his chin on Caspar’s head. “And I’m pretty sure _I_ didn’t blow up either of them. I don’t think these guys care much about their own men.”

Caspar looked up to the citadel that rose over the east side of the city. Sparks of magic, pinpricks of light, were flaring atop its walls and plumes of fire and smoke rose up from other parts of the city on cue. The ground kept shaking. “And I thought these guys couldn’t get much more hateable… Whoever’s running this place, I’ll kill ‘em!”

“I imagine you’ll have to get in line,” Linhardt said.

Two gargantuan rats wielding forks and a hooded mage rushed to intercept them; Caspar brandished his axe, hoping it wasn’t too hard to fight with Linhardt weighing him down and one wounded leg. Sure, the odds weren’t in his favor, but—

The mage slipped behind the two rats, blasted them both with fireballs, and pulled off his hood, and suddenly, Caspar found the odds weighing very heavily in his favor.

 _“Matthias! Matthias, is that you?”_ the mouse in the mage’s robes shouted out.

 _“Wesper!”_ Matthias laughed. “What are _you_ doing here in Mousehaven?”

“Oh, you know, running around, causing a mess, general espionage stuff,” Wesper said, clapping Matthias on the shoulders. “You’re one of the invaders everyone’s going wild about, huh? Are Lady Edelgard and Bernie here, too?”

“You bet! We were just about to what’s that word, renday-vooze…”

“Rendezvous?”

“Yeah! Let’s go!”

A part of Caspar was relieved he hadn’t had to fight. As much as he hated to admit it, he wasn’t much of a condition to do so. He limped after Matthias and his friend and hoped the other teams weren’t having such a rough time.

* * *

Marianne was having a rough time.

Squadron One sailed through the air, gliding on leathery wings across the length and breadth of the city, and Marianne hung on for dear life. The stone sky above Mousehaven was a storm of arrows, and with every swoop and dive Bruce executed to escape the deadly projectiles, Marianne felt as though she were about to fall, if the volleys of arrows didn’t fell her first. She squeezed her eyes shut. “Goddess protect us…”

“Oh, do not worry, darling Marianne!” Constance laughed as her bat corkscrewed out of the path of a volley of arrows. “I am not only the greatest young spellcrafter in the world, but a peerless pegasus rider as well! Hang on tight and all will be well!” She swooped close to the northern wall, slew two surprised archers with a blast of ice, and continued onward, narrowly missing the enormous striped tabby cat rampaging through the city roads.

The cat leaped and pounced across city streets, squeezing between buildings, hissing and snarling as soldiers’ spears and arrows—mere toys compared to its gargantuan size—poked and prodded it. Marianne felt sorry for it. Hapi had compelled it to come here and driven it into a violent frenzy, but she could tell from its bristling fur and pinned-back ears that deep down, it only wanted to run away and lick its wounds. She watched the cat catch a soldier in its paws and throw him against a wall hard enough to stun him, then pounce into a platoon of mounted soldiers and scatter them to the winds.

“He certainly seems to be having fun!” Constance crowed.

“He’s scared,” Marianne retorted. “The poor thing…”

“Ah, well, nevertheless—”

A rush of wind ripped the words from Constance’s mouth before she could finish. Her bat squealed and fell out of the sky; Constance grabbed her reins and desperately tried to regain control. “Bruce! Bruce, darling, what is wrong?”

Bruce wriggled and writhed in anguish. Marianne recognized well the body language of a beast in distress—he was hurt. She grabbed pawfuls of the bat’s fur and climbed down his side as the ground rushed past, clinging desperately to his flank. There was an arrow sticking in the bat’s vulnerable underbelly. His fur glistened and flecks of blood fell from the wound with every labored heave of his chest. “Constance, he’s injured!”

“Hang in there!”

Marianne reached for the arrow, her claws barely brushing against its shaft. She didn’t have quite enough reach. She strained, the wind whistling in her ears and whipping her fur, inched just a little further, and wrenched the arrowhead free, letting it fall to the ground. The bat let out another anguished, wheezing squeak. She wondered if his lung had been punctured.

“No, no, no, it’s okay, it’s okay,” Marianne whispered to him, patting his flank. “You’ll be okay, Bruce. Just hang on.” The wind tore her consoling words from her mouth, overwhelming her with its vicious howl. She cast a healing spell on the wound, wreathing the blood-slicked fur in a restorative glow, and struggled to pull herself back up as the bat righted himself.

She slipped and lost her grip, letting out a shocked scream as she found her feet dangling in thin air; Constance snatched her out of the air, grabbing her by the scruff of her neck, and hauled her back up. “Careful there! Now let us fly!” she shouted out, pushing Bruce skyward in a steep ascent just before they crashed into the side of a tower. “That was a close one…”

Constance pulled Bruce into a dive and skimmed a roof. Marianne felt an arrow fly over her head. She caught her breath and held onto Constance. The next time, she knew, they wouldn’t be so lucky. Nothing could stave off the misfortune she brought with her forever.

“Look! Down there!” Constance shouted, flinging out her paw. Marianne’s gaze followed her gesture to three familiar-looking figures riding down the street. _“Yuri! Balthus! Hapi!”_ Balthus looked up at her and waved, a cocky grin on his face.

Annette, who was riding with him, waved, too. _“Hi, Marianne!”_ she chirped.

A troop of soldiers in heavy armor headed out to cut off the quartet’s escape. Squadron Three pushed onward, undeterred, and Constance released both hands from her bat’s reins to cast a lightning-conjuring spell.

No stormclouds could gather in the stone sky above, but a fork of lightning descended from the false heavens nonetheless, striking the armored soldiers with a searing flash of light that left an acrid, burnt scent in the air. The one soldier who’d been directly hit crumpled to the floor, cooked in his own armor; the other two scattered, and Squadron Three rode on. Marianne offered the Goddess a silent prayer for the Goddess, hoping that his afterlife was kinder to him than his death.

Constance brought the bat lower, skimming the road next to her comrades. “Yuri! What in the Goddess’ name are you doing here?”

The one mouse of the quartet Marianne didn’t recognize gave her a rakish grin. “Oh, you know, running around, causing a mess, general espionage stuff…”

The riders skidded to a halt and Constance pulled Bruce into a spiral above them as a troop of mounted soldiers rounded the corner, scattering in formation at the sight of the invaders. _“Take positions!”_ their commander shouted. _“Release the Death Knight!”_

“Death Knight?” Yuri scoffed. “I’m flattered. Are you flattered, Balthus?”

“Hell yeah!”

Marianne’s pulse spiked. _Death Knight?_ She’d heard of that title: It belonged to the black-armored fiend who had terrorized the town and kidnapped Flayn last month, and supposedly it belonged to Jeritza, the academy’s former fencing instructor. Was that same fearsome fiend here? Had her cursed Crest somehow summoned him?

The formation split in half and a mounted mouse rode down the street between the soldiers, clad in scraps of spiny black metal inelegantly shaped into armor, with a black-painted rat’s skull perched atop his head and a bloody scythe held in one paw.

 _“Kill them, Death Knight!”_ the commander shrieked.

There was a flash of gleaming steel and his head fell from his shoulders. His rat, uncontrolled, squealed and scurried into the shadows, leaving his headless body to flop to the ground and collapse next to his head.

 _“I don’t take orders from you,”_ the Death Knight said, brandishing his freshly-bloodied blade. His voice was deep and sonorous, cutting through the din as sharply as the blade of his scythe cut through the air.

The rest of the soldiers, leaderless, screamed and fled.

“Is this their ‘Death Knight?’ Hah!” Constance laughed. “We shall handle him, shall we not, Marianne?”

“We should fly away,” Marianne offered. To say she didn’t like the aura of this armored mouse was an understatement.

“Nonsense; we do not even have to be _close_ to him to dispatch him!” Without further ado, Constance cast another spell and sent a blast of fire toward the Death Knight. “Sally forth, my Ashen Wolves!”

The Death Knight charged forward and cut through the fireball with his scythe. Lightning crackled around the curved, wicked blade, and before Marianne could shout out a flash of searing white light was heading toward her—

The next thing she knew, she was lying on the street and the rest of Squadron Three were circling around her.

 _“Brucie!”_ Constance wailed, rushing to her bat’s side. The bat lay in a crumpled heap, wisps of smoke curling up from his leathery wing, his chest heaving. There was a livid wound in his side matching the deep furrows Marianne could feel on her back. “Oh, Brucie, what has he done to you…? Marianne! Marianne, get over here!”

Marianne tried to push herself up, but the fall had knocked the wind out of her, and she could barely move. She’d scraped her elbows, knees, and chin badly when she’d fallen; the injuries stung like wasps’ stings. “I’m sorry…” she whispered.

Constance grabbed her by the wrist and hauled her up, panic-stricken. Her eyes darted between her and the bat. “You can heal him, can you not? You can heal him! Oh Marianne, I beseech you…”

Marianne tried to stand, but the effort left her lightheaded. Her legs crumpled beneath her; she could barely feel them. “I… I’m sorry. I should have stayed away. I cannot help anyone…”

“I know how you feel, darling,” Constance said, wrapping an arm over her shoulders, “but you _can!_ Please, save my poor Brucie!”

Marianne shook her head and felt as though she was about to vomit from the exertion. The world was turning gray and fuzzy, all the colors bleeding out like runny paints. Every breath felt like a struggle.

And the Death Knight was approaching.

 _“Had you simply fled,_ ” he intoned, _“I would not give chase. But now your bones beg my blade to sharpen itself upon it…”_

 _“Let’s go, girls!”_ Yuri shouted out, grabbing Constance by the arm and hauling her up onto his mount with Hapi. “Balthus, take the other one!”

The Death Knight’s steed scurried closer, carrying him across the street, and as Marianne’s eyes met those of the demonic soldier’s, she felt a familiar sensation rising in her chest and fogging her brain. A familiar fear, an anxiety, something she had always sought to quell rising within her.

The Death Knight came to a stop, staring down at her with pale violet eyes. _“How… interesting…”_

Marianne felt her blood boil and her muscles tense as her Crest howled inside her. She tasted blood on her tongue. A dark, wet, feral urge rose within her as the Beast awakened, driving away all thoughts of pain and weakness, and the figure of the Death Knight receded down a dark tunnel as all sound faded to a muted hum.

Everything went dark and silent, and when she awoke, she found herself cradled in a pair of strong arms.

“There’s that fight in you again,” Balthus said, setting her down on the ground as she stirred. The two of them—and the rest of Squadron Three—were huddled in a tucked-away alley as the omnipresent alarm bells continued to sound and the monstrous cat continued to let out distant hisses and yowls. “You were pretty wild out there!”

Marianne sat up and gingerly rubbed her chin. She couldn’t feel any injuries—Balthus must have healed her.

“And hey, you took my advice on making a good fist! I mean, you still broke all your knuckles because you punched him in his armor, but… great start! I’m proud of you!”

“Huh?” Marianne cradled her head, trying to collect her thoughts. She hadn’t _fought_ the Death Knight, had she?

“I mean, now he’s chasing us even harder, thanks to that stunt,” Yuri said, “but hey, good for you.”

Constance was slumped over in Hapi’s arms. “He was such a good bat,” she sniffled, wiping her eyes. “So cute, so _wiggly,_ always ate his bugs…”

“I know,” Hapi said, consoling her by running a paw through her curly blonde hair. “Bruce _was_ a good bat.”

“Don’t worry, Constance,” said Yuri. “We’ll get you another bat. You can name him Jason or Dick or Damien or something.”

“Wow, Yuri-Bird,” Hapi sneered, “I had no idea you were so good at grief counseling.”

“Look, we’re all broken up about this,” Yuri retorted, “but we’ve got bigger fish to fry. Like that cat. And that creepy reaper mouse. Let’s head farther south before things go any farther south.”

“I’m sorry,” Marianne said, bowing her head. “Leave me behind, if it helps.”

“Leave you behind?” He let out a laugh. “Well, if you’re volunteering…”

“Don’t mind him.” Hapi grabbed her by the arm and offered her a faint, bittersweet smile that barely reached her eyes. “Us weirdos have to stick together, right?”

Annette poked her head out and looked around the corner of the building they hid behind. “Coast is clear this way. Let’s go!”

They took off down the street behind her. Marianne felt the beast in her chest stir once more, as though cautiously sniffing the air and sensing danger. Of all the beasts she could understand, this one eluded her. She didn’t _want_ to understand it—she wanted it _gone—_ but it defied her wishes.

_Sensing danger._

She could smell it on the air.

A black blur scurried across the side of the house, leaping off the wall and landing in front of the party. It was the Death Knight yet again, his bloodied scythe gleaming.

 _“Oh, come on!”_ Hapi whined.

Annette skidded to a halt in front of him and frantically tried to reverse course as the Death Knight brought his scythe down on her.

And in a flash, she was gone, and Yuri’s sword was grinding against the scythe’s curved blade as he stood in her place. _“Hope you weren’t expecting a fair fight, creep,”_ he grunted, his arms shaking as he struggled to force the Death Knight’s blade back. _“Everyone, run!”_

Everyone ran. Yuri broke off and followed, with the Death Knight in hot pursuit. Hapi conjured a field of spikes out of black miasma, only for the Death Knight’s mount to nimbly leap over them and continue unabated. Annette conjured a blast of razor-sharp wind; he parried the invisible blade with ease and swung his scythe in a sweeping arc like a farmer reaping his harvest.

Marianne grabbed Annette and pulled her away before the blade could cut any deeper than a shallow gash across her chest and conjured a torrent of icy needles to slow the Death Knight down; as a thin rime coated the stone tiles of the street, he slipped and lost his bearing, falling to the ground surrounded by a pelting flurry of ice.

She kept running after the others, her heart and lungs pounding, her blood screaming at her with a primal, feral desperation to _survive—_ she fell to all fours and sprinted ahead to keep up with her comrades. A dark shadow fell over her mind; she glanced upward, backward, to see the Death Knight running after her on foot, gaining ground with every step.

Her paw fell on the hilt of a discarded sword; out of sheer desperation, her blood howling in her ears, she stood up and swung the blade in an arc so mightily that she felt as though her arms would rip themselves free of her shoulders. Her blade met the Death Knight’s scythe and sent it flying out of his grasp.

Unarmed, but no less dangerous—the feral, atavistic instincts of the beast within her told her that much—the Death Knight loomed over her. Marianne brandished her sword, though the trembling of her paws made the blade shiver and betrayed her fear.

_“I didn’t expect to encounter someone like you… how fortunate…”_

And then, another flash, and she was lying in Balthus’ arms again. “Gotcha!” he cheered.

She looked over his burly shoulder to see Yuri once again face to face with the Death Knight, distracting him with a blast of white magic before turning tail and running.

“Neat trick, huh?” Balthus asked her. “Don’t ask me how he does it.”

Another dark shadow flew overhead—much, _much_ larger than the Death Knight or his rat—and fell to the ground in front of him, unfurling into the shape of a very angry, very bloodied cat. It stood the size of a house, low to the ground, tail upraised, fur bristling, ears pinned back, its mouth open in a cavernous yawn that exposed all of its sharp fangs and the black emptiness of its hungry gullet and its eyes wide with vast, deep, rounded pupils.

Everyone came to an abrupt halt and looked for a way around. The cat ahead, the Death Knight behind, and walls to either side tall and imposing—they were trapped.

“Oh, shit,” Hapi said.

“Nice kitty,” Balthus said.

Marianne saw the pain and fear in the cat’s eyes, a hunger for carnage overwhelming its natural instincts of survival and hunger. It couldn’t be helped that Hapi’s mysterious powers drove beasts into such madness, as much as it couldn’t be helped that Marianne’s own cursed bloodline nourished the same bestial darkness within her. Instead of fearing it, she felt sorry for it.

“Don’t be afraid,” she told it, slipping out of Balthus’ grasp and slowly approaching the cat with paws upraised. “I won’t hurt you. We won’t hurt you.”

“Uh… you okay there, Snow White?” Hapi asked, cringing. “Did you hit your head or something? Get away from that thing!”

“I’m fine. He’s just scared.” Marianne laid a paw on the cat’s nose and softly rubbed its short fur. “Aren’t you? But I don’t mean you any harm, and there’s nothing to be afraid of.”

The cat’s mouth hung half open, blood still glistening on its fangs, as its fur laid flat and its tail sank. Its ears flicked forward.

“Good boy. Good boy. That’s it.”

And then the cat sank back to the floor, its rump and tail rising, its eyes widening, fur bristling, ears slipping backward again.

Marianne felt something grab her by the collar and yank her backward. _“Fuck!”_ Hapi shouted out. “Alright, plan B!”

The cat leaped overhead as quickly as a flash of lightning. Marianne’s head whipped around to follow it, and she saw it catch the Death Knight in its jaws and bound off toward the city walls.

Yuri stared silently at the swath of destruction the cat left in its wake on the path to greener pastures, cradling a very badly bloodied arm. Though Marianne hadn’t seen it, his engagements with the Death Knight, brief as they were, had made their mark. “Well,” he finally said, after a few seconds of speechlessness had passed him by, “that takes care of both our problems, then. Good work, team. You, too, whatever your name is.”

“This is Marianne,” Annette offered. “She talks to animals.”

Marianne didn’t bother correcting her.

“So, Hap riles ‘em up and you calm ‘em down?” Yuri smirked. “That’s a neat act.”

* * *

Bernadetta felt oddly alone as she and the rest of her faction of the Alliance of Four Mouses probed deeper into the city. Edelgard was being… distant, more like her old self, which she supposed she should be happy about, but there was something about the new Edelgard, the one she knew best, the one who would cuddle her and speak to her about her fears and anxieties, that made her absence hurt like a wound in her chest.

She’d grown used to being alone, and even grown to enjoy and prefer it, from an early age. She couldn’t remember when loneliness had ever _ached_ like this.

Maybe Edelgard was being so distant because she was embarrassed to have Bernadetta as a friend. That had to be it. Edelgard didn’t want Claude or Dorothea to tease her about it—and they would—and didn’t want Ferdinand crowing about how _he_ had finally proven himself superior to Edelgard von Hresvelg by virtue of having more than two friends, and didn’t want the stigma of being the weird, shy, loner girl’s friend. How could a beautiful princess want to be friends with a girl who couldn’t even comb her hair without having panic attacks, anyway? No one would believe it. They’d think Edelgard had to be using her for some reason, or maybe they’d think that Bernadetta had procured some kind of love potion. Hubert might try to kill her…

_“Bern! Are you alright?”_

Bernadetta snapped out of her reverie and realized that the rest of Squadron Two was ahead of her—except for Dorothea, who’d turned back to come and get her. “Uh…”

“It’s not safe to fall behind here,” Dorothea chided her, taking her paw and guiding her forward. “Are you okay?”

“No—I mean, y-yes, I’m fine,” Bernadetta said. “I’m not hurt or anything.”

She was a little tense—everyone was. Every attack they’d faced so far had been an ambush. It was enough to get on anyone’s nerves.

“Is something on your mind?”

“M-Maybe.”

“Wanna talk about it before we catch up with the others?”

Bernadetta looked up at Dorothea. Dorothea had an earnest smile and a bright shine in her eyes. “Well, um… D-Dorothea, have you ever been friends with someone, but they don’t, uh… they don’t act like your friend in front of other people?”

 _“Look out!”_ Byleth shouted from her position at the head of the party.

A troop of soldiers burst out of the alley behind Dorothea and Bernadetta; a larger group emerged in front of the others, catching Squadron Two in a pincer movement.

Dorothea drew a dagger from her cloak, parrying the first soldier to rush up to her and kicking him away, scattering the others with a bolt of lightning. “Bern… I’m _proud_ to be your friend. Always! Do you ever feel like I’m _not?”_ she asked, sounding almost hurt.

“No, it’s not you.” Bernadetta hastily aimed her bow and fired, nailing a soldier who’d been moving to flank Dorothea right between the eyes. “It’s… someone else. Did you ever have friends like that?”

“Oh, more than I could count! For all the sweet nothings they whisper in your ear backstage after the show, when you run into them at the market, they pretend they don’t even know you.” Dorothea sighed. “I’ve had my heart broken a lot by men like that—they love you as a singer, but can’t bear the thought of loving you as a commoner, of letting _other people_ see them loving you—” She caught a soldier’s arm, twisted the sword out of his paw, brought up her knee to snap his elbow like a twig, and pulled him to her chest to use as a living shield against another soldier’s lance. “—And not just because they were cheating on their wives. I’d say only half of them were cheating on their wives. You don’t need friends like that, Bern. If anyone ever asks _me,_ I tell them, _‘Of course_ I’m Bernie’s friend! She’s a wonderful young woman!’” she shouted out, punching another soldier in the face.

Bernadetta felt her whole face light itself on fire, right up to the tips of her ears, and struggled to line up another shot as Dorothea ducked under another soldier’s blade. “Has anyone ever asked you?”

“No. But that’s what I’d say if anyone did,” Dorothea said, grabbing Bernadetta and hauling her out of the path of another soldier’s axe. “So, who is this so-called friend? I could have a few words with them…”

Bernadetta glanced at Edelgard, who, of course, was cutting down her foes with impeccable grace and unmatched strength. Unmatched, that was, except for Dimitri. He was strong, too. “O-Oh, it’s nothing. She’s, uh… n-no one, really. No one special.”

One of the soldiers lunged for her; she hurriedly held up her bow to block him, only for him to nearly wrench it from her paws.

A bolt of lightning shot from Dorothea’s paw and caught the soldier’s arm; the entire left side of his body went limp and he flopped to the ground, releasing his hold on Bernadetta. “So it’s a she. And is she with us right now?”

“Oh, um—u-uh… Uh…”

“Is it Hilda?” Dorothea planted her foot squarely between one of the soldiers’ legs. “Because I _will_ punch Hilda if she’s talking about you behind your back.”

“No.” Bernadetta felt a telltale sound make her ears twitch, spied an archer scurrying across the eaves of a nearby building, and quickly squeezed off a shot, catching him in the shoulder and knocking him off the roof.

“Lysithea? I know she’s abrasive, but she’s just a kid—”

“No.” Bernadetta glanced at Edelgard again. What if Edelgard needed her help? It was a stupid thought to think—after all, she had Hubert now, and the Professor, and Dimitri, and definitely didn’t need any help from Bernie-Bear anymore…

Of course, Edelgard was doing just fine.

“It isn’t Petra, is it? Petra would never—” Dorothea stopped, then followed Bernadetta’s gaze. “You and Edie, huh?”

“What? No! Sh-She’s… She’s a _princess_ and I’m just… I-I make plain look like, well, _you…”_ Bernadetta gasped, hurriedly nocked an arrow, and sent it flying just over Dorothea’s shoulder, striking a soldier who’d been about to take advantage of her distraction.

“Oh, that’s completely different,” Dorothea said, grinning. “That’s the kind of romance they write operas about, Bern!”

“R-Really?”

“The princess, truly and deeply in love with a suitor so far below her station, unable to speak it to the world lest she draw the court’s ire…” Dorothea blasted one of the few remaining soldiers with lightning. “The king, fallen head over heels for a simple commoner girl—a role I’ve played plenty of times…” She sighed. “I can’t say those things end happily in real life, but… Edie’s not your typical princess.”

Bernadetta took a deep breath when the last of the soldiers fell, her chest and shoulders heaving. “You really think so…?”

“Yeah, nobility’s ridiculous like that. I think that was the last of them; are you okay, Bern?” Dorothea asked.

Bernadetta nodded. “Are you?”

“I can’t complain.” Dorothea looked over to the rest of the squadron. “Looks like they’re finished cleaning up over there, too. Let’s get back to them.” She took Bernadetta’s paw. “Oh, wait—this reminds me.”

“Reminds you of what?”

Dorothea winked. “Remember a couple days ago, when I told you that if I ever ended up turning into an adorable little mouse girl, I’d let you hug and squeeze me as much as you wanted?”

Bernadetta wasn’t sure her cheeks could get any redder (not that anyone could tell, between the fur and the colorblindness) before her flesh spontaneously combusted. “Um…”

“Go on.” Dorothea held her arms up at her sides. “A promise is a promise.”

“Is this really the best time?”

She shrugged. “We could die out here, so… yes?”

Bernadetta took a deep breath, wrapped her arms around Dorothea’s waist, and rested her cheek on her shoulder.

“Oh, come on. You call that a squeeze? Am I not adorable enough?” Dorothea hugged her back and rested an arm over her shoulders. “Oh, well. Let’s go.”

Edelgard turned around as Bernadetta and Dorothea caught up. “Oh, Bernadetta, Dorothea. Are you—”

Dorothea tightened her grip on Bernadetta’s shoulder and gently nuzzled her forehead. It tickled; Bernadetta couldn’t help but laugh.

There was a strange look in Edelgard’s eyes. “Oh, um… good to see you’re both safe,” she said stiffly.

Dorothea gave Bernadetta one last wink before pulling away.

“So,” Edelgard said, “Bern… adetta. Are you alright?” she asked, somehow flustered.

“I’m, um… ph-physically, yes,” Bernadetta answered. “Mentally…” She shook her head. “I think I’d like to go back to my room now.”

“I think I’d like to go back to your room now, too.”

“Huh?”

“Nothing. Never mind.” But Edelgard briefly took Bernadetta’s paw and squeezed it almost contritely.

Bernadetta felt her heart sink. What was _that_ supposed to mean? Why couldn’t Edelgard just say how she felt, like she had last night?

Progress through the city from that point on was slower, more deliberate, more cautious. In case any more buildings exploded near them, the group stuck to the center of the roads, leaving them more exposed to attack from other vantage points, but less vulnerable to whatever the enemy was doing to destroy the city around them. Bernadetta found herself suspiciously eyeing every house she passed, worried it would be the next one to erupt.

_“Bernie! Hey, Bernie!”_

She yelped and whirled around, bow drawn, before her brain had time to process the voice she’d heard—and nearly shot an arrow over Caspar’s head, which would have hit Linhardt in the face. _“Caspar?”_

“Hey!” Caspar hobbled after her. “Boy, am I glad to see a familiar face out here!” He waved at the others. _“Hey, Professor! Ferdinand! Edelgard!”_

Dorothea rushed to his side. “Caspar, Linhardt, are you alright?”

“I’m fine,” Caspar said, wincing as he put too much pressure on his injured leg. “Totally fine. Lin’s a bit battered, though.”

“I just need to sleep for a few days or so,” Linhardt mumbled as he sloughed off Caspar’s back and into Dorothea’s arms.

The two mice accompanying Caspar hurried forward. “Hi, Bernie,” Matthias said. “Nice to see you again. How’ve you been?”

“Uh… f-fine, I guess? Wesper, are your ribs, um… n-not broken anymore?”

Wesper patted his side and winced. “I’d hardly be here if they were.”

Byleth hurried to Caspar’s side and took stock of his injured leg. “What’s the status of the south side?”

“Um… we took out a few archers, I guess, and blew the gatehouse wide open,” Caspar sighed, as though disappointed.

“Although, technically, those blown-up buildings weren’t us,” Linhardt chimed in.

“Sorry, Professor. I wish we could’ve done more…”

“You’ve done plenty, Caspar. Good work.”

“If anything, these chuds are doing our work for us,” Matthias said. “At this rate, they won’t have a city left to defend!”

“Everything outside the eastern citadel is expendable to them,” Edelgard said coolly. “They’ll kill everyone in this city to get to me. That’s hardly a heartening turn of events.”

“We’ve—er, _they’ve_ got the whole city tangled up like a ball of twine,” Wesper said. “Don’t ask me how, but the Agarthans have these metal threads that can send messages across long distances. They laid them underneath every house here, along with big barrels of black powder.”

“Black powder?” Dimitri parroted, furrowing his brow.

“It’s an explosive substance,” Edelgard explained. “One barrel can do the work of a dozen mages. The Church forbids its production and considers it blasphemy.”

“All the threads lead to the citadel, like the center of a spiderweb,” Wesper explained. “They just have to send a signal to the right house and… boom. No more house.”

“It’s as I feared, then,” Byleth said. “We can’t take shelter anywhere; we’ll have to stay out in the open.” She clenched her paw tighter around the hilt of her sword.

 _No shelter?_ Bernadetta found her stomach churning as she stared into the black abyss behind the nearest window and wondered when it would erupt in flames. The last thing she wanted to do right now was spend more time out in the open.

“This entire city is a deathtrap,” Ferdinand muttered. “These devious fiends… the more of them I see down here, the more certain I am that we have an obligation to destroy them.”

“Do you think maybe some of us should, uh, head south to meet with Catherine and Alois when they get back?” Hilda asked. “I’m just saying, _Claude,_ that maybe it’s time to stop hanging out where you can get killed.” She shot a pointed glance at him.

“Don’t worry, Hilda,” he responded, “I trust you to keep me safe.”

Hilda’s face fell.

Cautiously, nervously, anxiously, everyone continued onward toward eastern side of the city and the citadel of those who slither in the dark. For once, Bernadetta didn’t feel like the most anxious person in the group. Everyone was on edge. Everybody’s eyes darted from one side of the streets to the other, glaring suspiciously at every open door and window, every flickering shadow in the alleys and atop the roofs.

Their paranoia was occasionally rewarded, but not often. Sudden storms of arrows, mice and rats leaping from the dark corners of the crumbling city, and the occasional eruption kept them on their toes.

“Striking from the shadows smacks of cowardice,” Ferdinand grumbled, pulling his lance from the flank of a slain rat. “These soldiers are worse than common bandits. Bernadetta, are you unharmed?”

Bernadetta gripped her bow tightly, keeping the bowstring half-drawn though her shoulders and biceps ached and burned. “No, I’m fine. I-I mean, yes.”

“Sometimes bandits have the right idea,” Byleth said in her typical lecture-voice. “Remember their tactics if you ever find yourself having to retake a city from a conquering force, cowardly as they may seem. Er… minus the explode-y parts. Don’t blow yourselves up.”

“Well said, Professor,” Edelgard said, the hard and nervous look on her face softening. “Your ability to make a lesson out of any situation never fails to surprise me.”

At last, after a slow and grueling march, they reached the citadel. The citadel was layered with tiers, each one roughly circular and each one smaller than the last, like a wedding cake—or rather like someone with no culinary experience had tried to make a wedding cake, or rather like Dorothea had tried to make a wedding cake. It was built together out of scraps, shored up out of buildings piled atop buildings, a jagged and uneven mountain of civilization scraped together into a mockery of nature. A ramshackle wall and ramparts surrounded it.

“I wonder if we will find Solon in there,” Ferdinand said. “I would like to give him a piece of my mind.”

“Get in line,” Hilda said, gnawing absentmindedly on a charred bit of wood before realizing that other people could see her and sheepishly tossing it aside.

“I’ll try to leave some of him left over for you two,” Lysithea grumbled.

“I would not like to be giving Solon a piece of my mind,” Petra said, “but he will be having a piece of my axe in his skull.”

Bernadetta stared up at the citadel and swallowed a lump in her throat. Whatever hardships she’d faced out here, she was sure there would be many, many more in there. Who knew what lurked in the winding tunnels snaking and slithering through the citadel’s layers? Who knew what further traps had been set within it? Who knew if it would collapse and entomb them all the instant they stepped inside it?

 _“Well, well, well!”_ called out a mouse standing atop the citadel’s ramparts, tossing her pale pink mane of wavy, disheveled hair over her shoulder as she leered down at the mice gathered at the citadel’s imposing gate. Though she was just as much a mouse as everyone else, something about her face somehow made her look even _more_ rodentlike than anyone else Bernadetta had seen down here. She exuded a quintessentially ratlike aura. _“If it isn’t the Blaiddyd brat, the Hresvelg rat, and the Riegan… boy.”_

Dimitri stiffened. “That voice… Cornelia?”

Dedue gave him a quizzical look. “The Faerghus court mage? What is _she_ doing here?”

 _“I am not a rat!”_ Edelgard protested.

“And I,” Claude said, “am disappointed you didn’t come up with a cutting epithet for me!”

“Cornelia.” Hubert stepped forward. “I thought I had smelled your foul stench as soon as I set foot in this city.”

“Paw,” Cornelia corrected.

“Excuse me?”

“You have paws. You set _paw_ in this city.”

 _“As I was saying,”_ Hubert continued, “surrender and step out of the citadel or we will be forced to _drag_ you out.”

Cornelia laughed. “I’d like to see you try!”

“Cornelia, what are you doing so far from Fhirdiad?” Dimitri called out, clenching his paws. “Have you sided with these monsters?”

“Oh, I’ve _been_ sided for a very long time.” Cornelia raised a thimble to her mouth and drank from it. “As for what I’m doing here, I often ask myself the same thing! ‘Come and be a mouse with us, Cornelia,’ he said. ‘It’ll only be a few weeks until Solon perfects his insect-based transmission vector,’ he said.” She threw the thimble to the ground in a fit of pique; it bounced off the stone tiles, spilling a red liquid that stank of wine that had gone a little vinegary. _“Three months and counting!”_

“It’s a shame your supply line for the antidote’s ingredients fell apart,” Hubert said smarmily, shaking his head. “Why not cut your losses and make things easier for all of us?”

“‘Cut my losses?’ Hah!” Cornelia threw back her head and laughed. “Don’t get me wrong—I’m not happy about the delays to our timetable, but look at yourselves! We’ve already won! This land will fracture, its royal families will wither, and the Church of Seiros will fall!”

“That will never happen!” Dimitri shouted. “We shall end your insidious evil today at any cost!”

“Oh? And who’s _we?_ You and your dear, darling stepsister El?”

All eyes turned on Dimitri and Edelgard. _“Stepsister?”_ several of Bernadetta’s classmates cried out in unison.

 _Stepsister?_ Edelgard and Dimitri were _step-siblings?_

“Oh, this is such a touching family reunion…” Cornelia sniffled. “Oh, El, Dima, if only your mother and fathers could be here for this moment. And that knight who gave his life for that fool of a king. What was his name? Clint?”

 _“Glenn,”_ Dimitri hissed through gritted teeth. “Do not disrespect his memory!”

“But I digress. It is quite a redemption story to see the poor, tragedy-plagued prince siding with a villain as repulsive as Edelgard von Hresvelg! Or should I say the Fl—”

 _“Silence, witch!”_ Hubert snarled, conjuring a bolt of black fire and hurling it at her. Cornelia ducked under the ramparts and scurried away as the fireball sailed over the wall and crashed into one of the taller tiers of the citadel. _“Fire everything!”_

Lysithea joined in on his barrage, sending orbs of light and clouds of miasma over the wall; both stepped back, panting, shoulders heaving.

Cornelia poked her head up over the wall. “Missed me—”

Bernadetta took aim with her bow, even though the strenuous act of drawing the bowstring taut felt like hauling a lead weight, and fired at the exact same time Claude did. His arrow zipped over her head and skimmed her scalp, but hers struck the side of Cornelia’s head and cut through her ear, leaving a bloody gash above her eye and a hole in her ear.

“Ugh! Insolent rats!” Cornelia spat, ducking yet again with one paw clasped over her bleeding air.

Bernadetta nocked another arrow. Edelgard gave her an approving nod and a smile that didn’t melt the fury in her eyes; Claude grinned and gave her a thumbs-up. _“That’s our Bernie, alright!”_ Caspar crowed. _“Best damn archer in Garreg Mach!”_

“It looks like we’ll have to drag her out of there, then,” Dimitri fumed, crossing his arms.

 _“As I was saying,”_ Cornelia called out, still hiding behind the ramparts, “would you really be so chummy with Edelgard if you knew who she was, little princeling? Who she _really_ was? Do you know why she left Fhirdiad?”

“Ignore her,” Dedue told his prince. “She is only trying to anger you, Your Highness.”

“You can’t trust a word she says,” Edelgard added.

“Does the name ‘Flame Emperor’ ring a bell?” Cornelia asked. “Edelgard, surely _you_ must recognize your own alias. The master of the Death Knight, the figure behind that green-haired brat’s kidnapping—”

“You _dare_ accuse Lady Edelgard of kidnapping Flayn?” Ferdinand shouted out at Cornelia.

“Ask her yourself… if you think you can trust her! She’s the one who incited the late Lord Lonato’s rebellion against the Church, who hired that bandit Kostas to murder her fellow lordlings, who tried to ransack the holy tomb of Seiros on the Goddess’ Rite of Rebirth, who plotted so many terrible things we haven’t even gotten to do yet—and where, Dimitri, was she when the _Tragedy of Duscur_ happened?”

 _“What?”_ Dimitri snarled, turning an accusing eye upon Edelgard.

“This is asinine,” Edelgard said, turning away from his glare.

Dorothea was shocked, and Bernadetta knew she was reflecting on those incidents—Lonato’s rebellion, the skirmish in the Holy Tomb, the search for Flayn in the monastery’s catacombs—and realizing how many times she’d come close to death. “Edie, no…”

Bernadetta knew that Edelgard had done terrible things, but hearing the specific incidents named was crushing. The Death Knight’s visage had been burned into her nightmares. The terror she’d felt in those battles had been so strong, so heart-pounding, that she’d felt as though she’d shaved years off her lifespan from being there. And it had been Edelgard’s doing. She felt as though she’d been punched in the gut. How could they have forced her to enact such schemes?

 _“She’s been working for us since she was ten!”_ Cornelia crowed.

“We’ll blast our way in!” Edelgard barked. “Hubert, Lysithea, concentrate all firepower on the door!”

 _“Is it true?”_ Dimitri spat at her.

Edelgard ignored him. “Claude, Bernadetta, Petra, fire a fusillade over the walls and don’t let up until you hear her scream—”

Dimitri grabbed her by the shoulders. _“Is it true, Edelgard?”_ he bellowed.

Hubert, ever the loyalist even though the rest of the Black Eagles (and the other students) were staring wide-eyed at Edelgard with shock and disbelief, grabbed his arm. “Keep your paws off her, brat, unless you want to start an international incident!”

“Hubert, do not manhandle my liege,” Dedue warned with a threateningly stoic tone, readying his axe.

“Everyone, calm down!” Byleth shouted out over the growing uproar.

 _“Who cares if it’s true?”_ Bernadetta blurted out. _“Do you think Edelgard_ liked _working for these monsters?”_

Everyone fell silent. Edelgard looked at her, eyes wide, mouth agape, shocked betrayal written all over her face in every quiver of her whiskers, and Bernadetta realized that she had made a terrible, terrible mistake.

Dimitri took a step away from Edelgard, shoulders shaking. _“You…”_ he snarled.

Dedue put a paw on his shoulder. “Calm yourself, Your Highness.”

“Did you have a part to play in any of these atrocities?” Dimitri asked. His grip on his spear tightened. “Answer me, or I’ll—”

Byleth stepped in front of Edelgard. “Dimitri, that’s enough. I won’t have you threatening my students.”

“My parents—”

“Your father and our mother died by these monsters’ designs, yes,” Edelgard said, regaining her composure, “but _I_ played no part in it. I wish to punish them for that atrocity as much as you do.”

“But you’ve participated in their _other_ atrocities?”

“That’s irrelevant.”

“You aided and abetted them in their crimes, knowing what they’ve done?”

“That’s irrelevant!”

 _“She was your mother, too—”_ Dimitri bellowed, lunging forward only for Byleth to parry his spear.

 _“I said, that’s enough,”_ she told him, the Sword of the Creator trembling in her paws as she pushed back against Dimitri’s prodigious strength. Edelgard looked shaken and drew back toward Hubert.

“Um, not to intrude or anything,” Matthias said, “but irregardless of whatever you guys are talking about, Edelgard’s kind of our prophesied savior down here, so, uh… just putting that out there for your consideration.”

Cornelia’s laughter drifted through the air. _“Yes! Yes! Rip each other apart like the starving rats you are! Soldiers, ready the artillery! Pittacus, Bias, initialize the viskam!”_

“Everybody, stop shouting,” Petra shouted, “and be listening to me!”

Her voice was lost in the crowd.

 _“Everybody, listen to Petra!”_ Dorothea bellowed, commanding years of professional voice training to force herself to be cold.

The chaos quieted to a simmering tension.

“In Brigid, there is a story we are telling our children,” Petra said, “about a hare being chased by a wolf. The hare is running, and has been running all day. The wolf relentlessly pursues her, all the while shouting, ‘you can run, but you cannot hide!’ The hare is on the last of her legs. She will not be surviving. But then she is thinking, ‘Why is he telling me that I cannot be hiding? He has nothing to be gained from telling me how to escape him.’ So she chooses not to listen to him, and hides, and the wolf loses her scent and goes home hungry. The lesson is to not be trusting the words of your enemy. He will never tell you how to defeat him.”

Matthias looked around, stuck his paws in his pockets, and stared sheepishly down at his feet, although Bernadetta couldn’t imagine why, since he’d mostly stayed out of this argument.

“Well said, Petra.” Claude nodded. “The Almyrans—I mean, I heard the Almyrans have a story like that, except it’s a jackal, not a wolf, and the hare ends up getting stung by a scorpion and dying. The message is to always look before you leap.”

“Sounds like you could stand to learn from it,” Hilda said.

“Anyway, are we gonna let Cornelia play us like a fiddle?” Claude asked. “Or are we going to take back this city?”

Dimitri took a deep breath, his shoulders slumping. He was silent for a while, ruminating on Petra’s fable. He closed his eyes, twitched his nose, and scratched his head. “…What did you have to do with the Tragedy of Duscur, Edelgard?”

“Oh, for the love of—”

_“Answer me, Edelgard!”_

“Your Highness,” Dedue said, grabbing him by the shoulders, “stop this.”

Dimitri wrenched himself free of his vassal’s grip. “Let me go! They were _your_ people, too, Dedue! Can’t you hear them screaming out for vengeance? Am _I_ the only one?” He leveled his spear at Edelgard. “Answer me!”

“I don’t know about the screams of the dead, but I can hear the laughter of our enemies,” Claude said.

“I had nothing to do with the Tragedy of Duscur,” Edelgard said. “I was twelve or thirteen. I couldn’t so much as lift an axe at that point, let alone kill your parents.”

Bernadetta wondered what Edelgard had been doing at that point. Twelve or thirteen would have been around the time she’d been released from the dungeons… so she would have been still struggling to piece herself back together after that. She couldn’t have done it.

“So that’s _one_ crime you deny committing,” Dimitri said, lowering his spear. His tail flicked angrily back and forth. “Regardless, I can’t believe you _served_ these monsters. You were right—the El I knew died when she left Fhirdiad. If only you’d stayed dead.”

Edelgard met his glare with a frosty glower of her own, clutching her cloak over her shoulder. “I hate to disappoint. At any rate, my past deeds are currently of no consequence—”

“They are of _every_ consequence! _We_ are living through the consequences right now! _Your_ consequences!”

 _“Shut up and run!”_ Byleth shouted out, shoving Dimitri aside and grabbing Edelgard by the arm.

With a hiss and rush of air, a fusillade of projectiles flew over the wall, traveling in a high, steep arc upward before plummeting down; the party beat a hasty retreat. Bernadetta felt one of the projectiles strike her in the leg as she ran. The pain was excruciating—almost as bad as Kronya’s poisoned knife—and she fell to the ground, scarcely able to see straight.

Someone dragged her along with the others. There was nothing they could do but retreat—any shelter they took in the surroundings could transform into an inferno at any moment. Bernadetta caught a glimpse of Byleth extending her sword’s blade and lashing it across the air, cutting through the projectiles in midair and knocking them aside—but she was only one woman against a hailstorm, and with her arm over her head to protect herself, she ran as well.

The barrage stopped as abruptly as it had started.

“I’m… guessing they have to reload,” Claude hissed through gritted teeth. His bow arm hung limp at his side, an arrow stuck in his forearm.

Bernadetta choked down a mouthful of precious air as she tried to ignore the screaming pain in her leg. The arrow she saw protruding from her bloodied fur was like nothing she’d seen before, with a diamond-shaped head cast from a slick white metal and a shaft that was definitely not made of wood.

Byleth ripped three arrows from her arm with a grunt that sounded more irritated than pained. “I need a healer,” she said as casually and matter-of-factly as though she’d just gotten a paper cut. “Hubert, Lysithea, focus your strongest spells on the gate,” she commanded. “Everyone, stand back!”

A barrage of light and dark magic crashed against the solid, hardy oaken gate like the waves of a stormy sea, splintering the wood. But the gate, though battered, held.

A beam of light and a crack of thunder split the air within the citadel; seconds later, a spear of lightning descended from the stone sky, striking the ground where Byleth had been had she not jumped out of the way moments before; she lost her balance and fell to the ground as the taste and scent of burnt air hung in the air.

“Hit that door again!” she shouted.

Hubert and Lysithea hit the door again. This time, the mighty wooden gate crumpled, its surface caved in and splintered.

“One more good hit ought to do it,” Byleth said. “Linhardt, Dorothea, quickly, tend to the wounded.”

Linhardt rushed to Bernadetta’s side and grimaced at the sight of the arrow sticking out of her leg. “Is it just this one?” he asked.

Bernadetta nodded.

“Phew.” He squeezed his eyes shut, turned his head, ripped the arrow out, and cast a healing spell on the wound with his eyes still closed. “Is it gone?”

Bernadetta looked at the pristine (though still a little stained) patch of fur where the arrow had been. “Yeah.”

“Good.” Linhardt opened his eyes and hurried off. His bedside manner left much to be desired.

Another lance of lightning split the heavens; this one would have struck Dedue if Dimitri hadn’t pulled him back.

“Ugh… where’s our air support?” Hilda whined.

Another volley of the strange white arrows shot over the wall. Bernadetta braced herself—

Only for a blast of icy wind to tear through the air, scattering the arrows; they fell like twigs, stripped of their speed and strength.

 _“You’re welcome!”_ Constance shouted out as she, Marianne, and Annette ran into the street from a shadowed alleyway.

“So this is where all the action is now, huh?” Balthus asked, stepping out of the shadows with the rest of the Ashen Wolves. “Count me in.”

Hilda shot to her feet. _“Marianne!_ Are you okay?”

Marianne, splattered head to toe with blood, nodded, her brown doe eyes wide and soft. “Yes. None of this is mine.”

“Oh, hey, Hilda!” Balthus said, grinning ear to ear. “What the hell are _you_ doing here?”

Yuri looked at him. “…You _know_ that girl?”

“Oh, yeah! Me and her brother go way back!”

Hilda gasped. “You know Holst?”

Yuri rolled his eyes. “Touching. Oh, hi, Bernie.”

Bernadetta’s heart froze solid the instant his eyes locked with hers.

“Yuri, you’re okay!” Matthias cried out. “Thank goodness!”

“As you can see,” Yuri said, “I’m fit as a fiddle now, in case you were worried about your best friend.”

Byleth, noticing how Bernadetta was looking at him, gave him a suspect glare. “Who are you?”

“I’m in charge of the Ashen Wolves.” Yuri crossed his arms. “Ask Bernie and Edelgard about me if you’re curious.”

Bernadetta frantically shook her head as soon as Byleth turned to look at her.

The gate burst apart under the next assault, and Dimitri gripped his lance so tightly it might break. _“With me, Dedue! We’ll make these dastards pay!”_

“Everyone else, charge, before the next volley!” Byleth said, drawing her sword. “We’ll be safer in there than out here!”

“I’m not finished with you, Edelgard,” Dimitri spat at his stepsister. “But we have a common enemy to face first.” He looked up at the citadel’s ramparts. “Cornelia! I shall cut your traitorous tongue from your mouth myself!”

 _“Try it, princeling!”_ Cornelia taunted him.

“Breach these walls,” he growled to his classmates, “and slaughter these slitherers to a man! Show them no quarter!”

On the way into the citadel, Edelgard brushed past Bernadetta.

“I-I’m so sorry, El,” Bernadetta stammered, hurrying after her. “I—I didn’t mean—It just slipped out—she was saying so many horrible things about you and I-I was only t-trying to defend you—”

“What I said to you last night was in confidence,” Edelgard said brusquely, not even sparing a glance in her direction as she gripped her axe tighter and ran across the threshold.

Bernadetta’s heart plummeted into her stomach. She had betrayed Edelgard’s trust. Four days they’d grown closer, learned to open up to each other, came to rely on each other, and with two sentences she had ruined it all. Edelgard hated her now. Hubert was probably going to kill her in her sleep tonight, if Dimitri didn’t get to her first. Or maybe Edelgard would insist on killing her herself, as revenge…

“Bern, are you alright?” Dorothea asked, laying a paw on her shoulder.

Bernadetta realized that she’d been sniffling. “Y-Yeah, I’m… I’m…” She shook her head. “No,” she croaked. “I should’ve kept my mouth shut…”

“It’s okay. You meant well.” Dorothea looked down at the ground. “Edie’s a complicated woman, I’ll give her that much. I don’t know how I feel about her now, but I’m with Petra. We can’t take our enemy at her word—I want to know what she did, but I want to hear the truth from _her._ If you hadn’t spoken up, though, I think Dimitri wouldn’t have been the only fragile noble ego calling for her head.”

“I don’t think she’ll ever think I did the right thing,” Bernadetta said. “She trusted me t-to see her like no one else did, and I—And she was wrong to trust me…”

Dorothea hugged her. “She’ll come around. All this time, while we were up there searching for you and Hubie was pulling his hair out, _you_ were down here helping her. This won’t make her forget that.”

Bernadetta nodded if only to convince herself.

“When this is over, Edie will remember that you were there for her when even Hubert von Vestra couldn’t be. One fight isn’t going to ruin your relationship.”

“How many fights does it take?”

“Oh, about a dozen, if you have them all in a row.” Dorothea tousled her hair playfully. “Chin up, Bern. Stick with her—she might still need you.”

“But—”

Dorothea gave her a little push. “Go, go! Win her back!”

Prodded onward, Bernadetta went.

* * *

Edelgard, led by her professor and flanked by students who no longer fully trusted her, stormed the citadel. This was where the city became a maze in three dimensions, its twisting passages extending upward as well as across the ground. While there was no greenery to be found in this city, thin, spindly mushrooms sprouted from cracks in the stone, and in the darkest tunnels, luminescent fungus and moss of all shapes and sizes lit the darkest corners, chillingly unearthly and oddly beautiful.

Though there wasn’t much opportunity to enjoy that beauty. With Hubert at her side, she fought her way through the citadel’s haphazard architecture, slipping through its winding tunnels, climbing its slapdash walls and fortifications, silencing rats and mice with each swing of her axe.

The labyrinthine structure of the citadel, both above ground and below, brought forth some difficulties in unit cohesion. Dimitri and his ever-loyal servant, of course, were the first to break away from the others, howling for Cornelia’s head all the while; Yuri and his Ashen Wolves answered to no orders but their own; Claude oversaw his classmates himself. Edelgard found herself and Hubert separated from the rest of her classmates and Byleth early on, with only Matthias managing to trail behind her with his usual puppylike enthusiasm.

 _“Lady Edelgard!”_ Hubert shouted out, yanking her backward by the scruff of her neck as a lance of lightning struck the floor in front of her. “Are you safe?”

“Not a scratch on me, Hubert,” she answered.

She thought she saw a rare smile form on Hubert’s furry face. “That is… good. I am glad to be by your side again.”

“I’m sure you worried.”

“I did more than worry,” Hubert admitted, that rare smile quickly vanishing. “I feared I would never see you again. Or that the next time I saw you, it would not be… _you.”_

Edelgard felt a chill run up her spine at the thought of the slitherers’ plan. Could the Plague Rat really be the replacement they had in mind for her? He was such a monstrous brute… did they think he would serve them well?

“This is all my fault,” he admitted. “I failed to take this enemy seriously at first, and because of it, you were taken again. I have made nothing but missteps along the way, further prolonging your time down here.” Edelgard swore she could hear his voice crack. “I fear I cannot fully express the magnitude of my failure, Lady Edelgard. I don’t have the right to even beg for your forgiveness.”

“We are nearing a victory I have dreamed of for years, though I’d have preferred it under different conditions,” she said. “In light of that, I would graciously accept any apology you would offer, Hubert. Truth be told, I am glad to see _you_ again as well.”

True, she would rather he wasn’t a mouse right now, but still, having him at her side made things feel _right_ again. Her shadow had returned to her.

“You flatter me.”

“No, it’s true. I’ve missed you. When we were first transformed into mice, and I struggled to accept what had happened, do you know what Bernadetta did to help me?”

“I imagine she cowered in fear until you were galvanized into rescuing her from some horrible beast.”

Edelgard almost smiled. He had no idea how backwards he had it. “She tried to imitate your voice and say something _you_ would say, Hubert.”

Hubert gawped at her. “She… I beg your pardon?”

“It wasn’t the best imitation, but it was enough to remind me how you’ve been there for me over the years. I wouldn’t be here if not for that.”

She and Hubert forced their way further into the citadel. “I hope she was not too much trouble, that Bernadetta,” he said as he cut a bloody path through a mob of soldiers with a burst of dark fire.

“No, not at all. In fact, I relied on her nearly as much as I rely on you,” Edelgard said. Then again, that wasn’t exactly accurate—she’d never _cuddled_ Hubert no matter how bad her nightmares had been. Bernadetta was an altogether different kind of special—even if she _had_ humiliated her out there on the other side of the wall.

“As sweet a girl as she is, I confess I find that hard to believe,” Hubert said, blasting away a rat Edelgard’s axe had failed to kill. “But it seems from her… outburst that you’ve welcomed her into your inner circle, for better or for worse. Does she know too much? Shall I kill her?”

“No!” Edelgard said sharply. Hurt as she’d been by that outburst, she knew that Bernadetta had simply been defending her. The last thing she wanted was for anyone to think she was some hapless captive of the Agarthans—her plans were theirs and theirs were hers, even if she had planned to betray them at her earliest convenience. She would almost rather her classmates see her as a perpetrator of ghastly crimes and hate her than see her as a perpetual victim and _pity_ her.

But still—Bernadetta had been trying to be brave. For _her._

“No,” she repeated, calmer.

Hubert gave her a curious look. “Does the black eagle have a left wing now, too, then?”

“Jealous, are you?”

He shook his head. “Perhaps you need two people to look after you, Lady Edelgard. If you indeed still trust her.”

The two of them climbed through a trapdoor onto the surface of the next tier of the citadel. Hubert flung out an exploratory wave of miasma to clear any enemies out of the area before Edelgard followed him up.

The next thing she knew, he was flying backward; a rat, its eyes glowing blue as a nearby mage enthralled it, bore down on him, swinging a long, hooked knitting needle.

 _“Hubert!”_ Edelgard cried out, swinging her axe. Metal clashed with metal. Drool dripped from the rat’s slavering, smoking maw, and Edelgard felt her guts try to slither their way up her throat. She didn’t know how anyone could stand that cloying, stifling, _terrifying_ odor that clung to these things, let alone puppet them into battle or ride them like horses. It was like there was a direct line from her nose all the way to her deepest childhood fears. And that wasn’t even counting their sharp, long incisors stained with blood, their clutching claws, their snakelike tails rasping against the ground—

A sword cut through its neck, quelling its will to fight with a spurt of blood.

“You and Hubert okay, Edelgard?” Matthias asked. “Maybe you should make that three people, huh?”

Hubert gave him a very cold look as the mouse helped him up. “Excuse me?”

“Look, I know you guys used to be human, so you’re not exactly used to it, but…” Matthias tapped on his ears. “We’re good listeners, us mice.”

Hubert rolled his eyes. Edelgard could already tell that he didn’t like Matthias.

 _“Drop your weapons and surrender!”_ a trio of archers shouted, nocking wicked arrows to their bows and taking aim.

Hubert grinned and held out his paw. “As you can see, fools, I am already unarmed. But which flies faster, a spell or your arrows?”

The archers couldn’t answer because the question had hardly left Hubert’s mouth before three arrows planted themselves in the side of their necks in quick succession. They all crumpled like puppets whose strings had been cut, their arrows flying in wild arcs through the air and missing their intended targets by a mile.

Bernadetta poked her head up over the railing that lined the edge of the terrace. “D-Did I get them?”

“I think the arrows would’ve flown faster,” Matthias said. Hubert gave him another dirty look. “Just saying. Arrows are all zippy, and magic is like ‘fwoosh…’”

“We should save this debate for another time,” Edelgard said. Another lance of lightning shot up from within the citadel and struck the ground within its walls. She wondered who it had been aiming for.

A blast of black miasma struck her. It came out of nowhere—a glancing blow, but still enough that for a few seconds, it felt as though she were trying to breathe through hot tar.

 _“Lady Edelgard!”_ Hubert gasped, rushing to her side.

 _“El!”_ Bernadetta gasped, rushing to her side.

 _“Edelgard!”_ Matthias gasped, rushing to her side.

Edelgard coughed and pulled herself to her feet, forcing the caustic black mist from her lungs.

Myson stood across the terrace, pristine mages’ robes contrasting with his scarred face, ragged whiskers, and heavily-notched ears. “Next time, I won’t miss,” he said with a lopsided smirk.

 _“‘Next time?’”_ Hubert snarled, summoning a volley of dark spikes.

Myson dived out of the way and returned a volley of his own. Edelgard and her small team scattered to avoid the strike, only for her to find her axe facing another blade.

“Take her down, Metodey,” Myson shouted, “while I distract her pet mage!”

Metodey—one of Edelgard’s lieutenants in her so-called ‘Flame Army’ drawn from the ranks of imperial soldiers—grinned. Even as a human, he had a uniquely weaselly face, and transforming into a mouse had, of course, done nothing to cure him of that rodentlike disposition. Man or mouse, he had a face in desperate want of a fist.

“Pleasure meeting you here, Your Highness,” he snarled.

“What are you doing here?” Edelgard snarled, parrying a strike of his short sword. One of Myson’s spells grazed her back, singeing her cloak, and she quickly tried to reposition herself so that Metodey was between him and her. “You’re one of mine! An Imperial soldier! A servant of Adrestia!”

“Hah! Adrestia, Agartha… by the end of today, there won’t be a difference between the two!” Metodey crowed as his sword clashed again with Edelgard’s axe. “I’d like to say it’s nothing personal, but I’m glad the Plague Rat can still use you if you’re dead—I’m going to enjoy carving you up!”

“Charming as always,” Edelgard grunted, forcing him backward. As loath as she was to rely on her Crests in battle, she appreciated the burst of strength they gave her—her next strike ripped the sword from his paw and sent him scurrying.

A blast of dark fire flew between them before Edelgard could lunge forward and slay Metodey, singeing the tip of her nose. The blossom of pain and rank scent of charred flesh that filled her nose was almost debilitating, crossing the threshold from one sense to another and making her feel almost blinded and deafened. She reeled backward.

“Dammit! I don’t need your help, Odesse!” Metodey snarled at the second dark mage who’d arrived on the scene. Hubert had his hands full battling the newcomer and Myson at once. He picked up his sword while Edelgard was still disoriented. _“Now, Princess, how shall I butcher you?”_

Edelgard blocked a frenzied strike of his sword, still struggling to fight past the sensory overload, let alone his swordplay.

 _“The Agarthans promise a new world, Princess! A world of strength and punishment! And there’s a whole lot of room up at the top in those kinds of worlds for people like_ me—”

A white arrow buried itself in his chest. He looked down at it with bemusement before the poison coating its tip sank into his blood and he started screaming.

Another arrow hit him in the chest next to the first one, and he stopped screaming. And then another one hit him in the chest, and then a fourth one buried itself in his eye. Silenced forever, he crumpled to the floor.

Edelgard glanced over her shoulder at Bernadetta, who was standing with a look of shock on her face.

“I’m sorry!” Bernadetta wailed. “W-Was I not supposed to kill him? H-He was s-scary, so…”

Edelgard kicked Metodey’s corpse for good measure, took his short sword, and threw it at Odesse. The blade buried itself in the dark mage’s shoulder, allowing Hubert to blast him point-blank with a swarm of black and violet lights and throw him backward.

“It’s fine,” she told Bernadetta. “I never liked him anyway.”

Odesse picked himself up and ripped the sword from his shoulder. “Curse you, Adrestian traitors! To the flames with all of you!” His paw traced a sigil in the air, and a blossom of darkness above him coalesced into four wicked batlike creatures with shards of stone protruding like crowns from their leathery foreheads.

Like miniature dragons, the batlike creatures belched fire; Edelgard rushed to grab Hubert and knocked him over before the flames consumed him. _“Bernie!”_

 _“Got it!”_ Bernadetta nocked another arrow and fired, catching one of the beasts in its soft underbelly. It let out a horrendous shriek and swooped down at her, its claws raking her back as she threw herself down in front of it. The beast hit the floor and scuttled toward her, screeching and bellowing. Matthias threw himself at it with a swing of his sword, but the blade barely made a scratch on its leathery hide.

“Excellent work, Odesse!” Myson crowed. “It’s no use, Edelgard—our little demonic beasts are more than enough to rip you and your friends to shreds! But don’t worry—as long as all the pieces can be accounted for, your corpse will still be plenty valuable to us!”

Hubert blasted one of the beasts with dark magic; it barely shrugged. “Blasted thing!”

Edelgard held up her axe as a makeshift shield, blocking the strike of one of the beast’s talons. The force of the strike sent her tumbling head over tail; she barely recovered in time to strike her blade across the beast’s belly, cutting a sizable, but far from mortal, gash in its leathery hide.

“It’s already over, Edelgard!” Myson let out a wicked laugh. “My only regret is that the Plague Rat won’t be able to kill you himself! But I’m sure he’ll—”

A stream of white light ripped through the air, cutting through the highest layer of the citadel and reducing it to ruin in an instant. For a second, the entire gloomy, eternally twilit corridor the city occupied was lit by blinding daylight; Edelgard squeezed her eyes shut, but could still see the beam of light like a scar burned into her eyelids.

“What the fuck was that?!” Myson shouted out. He looked up, his eyes widening in fear as an enormous white mouse hurled itself through the air and slammed into the top of the citadel, dislodging the wreckage of its topmost tier. A shower of debris ranging in size from grains of sand to boulders rained down on the rest of the citadel. _“What the fuck is that?!”_

Edelgard stared up at the gargantuan creature. The size of a large cat, or perhaps a small dog, and not quite a mouse—its paws were wickedly sharp and scaly talons, like birds’ feet, and its naked tail was thick, scaly like a wyvern’s, and alabaster white. Taut, leathery skin stretched across its arms and fingers like bat’s wings. Its eyes, too, were reptilian with slitted pupils, and glowed an eldritch green.

The great white beast, towering over the chaos, opened its jaws wide. Its gullet lit up as bright as sunlight and another spear of white light lanced out with a mighty roar, vaporizing two of the four demonic beasts and continuing onward to rip a sizable hole in the citadel’s walls.

 _“Wretched beasts slithering beneath the earth, soiling this sacred place!”_ the beast roared—its voice, though distorted, strangely familiar—as it climbed across the wreckage of the citadel. _“You shall all suffer the Goddess’ retribution! Burn! Your screams shall fade into windswept ashes!”_

“It cannot be,” Hubert gasped, staring up at the creature in awe. Edelgard, too, was awestruck—and confused more than anything.

Could she really be staring at her ultimate enemy, the progenitor of this twisted society, Saint Seiros, the Immaculate One— _Archbishop Rhea?_

Why was _she_ a mouse?

Myson let out a panicked scream. “Odesse, find Cornelia and Solon, tell them to engage the Pyrrhus protocol, and _get the hell out of here!”_

Odesse nodded and vanished in a column of light.

Myson glanced at Edelgard, unable to hide the fear in his eyes. “You may have won this round, but _we_ still have the upper hand—”

 _The weapon._ He was talking about Matthias’ weapon! “Hubert, don’t let him escape!” Edelgard shouted out, lunging at him.

“Goodbye, Edel—”

“Silence, wretch!” Hubert snarled, casting a spell to block his warp spell before he could cast it. Myson gasped, shocked, and then turned tail and ran into the citadel’s tunnels.

“After him!” Edelgard shouted to the others. “Matthias, he’s headed for that weapon he stole from your camp—we cannot let him take it!”

“Weapon?” Matthias furrowed his brow. “O-Oh, yeah! Yeah, we, uh, definitely can’t let him keep it! B-B-But, um, m-maybe…”

“Oh, shut up, you furry bumpkin,” Hubert spat. He ran off after Myson with Edelgard, and Bernadetta and Matthias followed.

Myson fled into the tunnels that snaked through the citadel, and Edelgard and her team followed. The fortress, inside and outside, was in chaos. The thundering steps of the Immaculate One as she perched atop the citadel’s roof and clawed her way down shook the structure to its foundation, and Edelgard found herself worrying that the whole thing could come tumbling down at any moment.

“Can you explain what this ‘weapon’ is, Lady Edelgard?” Hubert asked as he traded magical blows with Myson across the slithering halls.

“Matthias says it’s like a Hero’s Relic,” Edelgard said, though she wondered if it really was. Claude seemed suspicious of his claims, and Edelgard had to admit herself that Matthias seemed far cagier than usual when discussing it. “Whatever it is, Myson thinks it’s important. We cannot let the Agarthans keep it or use it.”

“Understood.” Hubert kept his head down as a blast of miasma sailed over it and returned fire with a crackling burst of dark spikes. “Run and hide all you like, Myson! Either way, death comes for you!”

Myson ducked and Hubert’s attack sailed into the wall ahead, burning through the stone and leaving a sizable crater behind. He slipped sideways into a crevice and began hurrying down a helical staircase curling its way deeper into the stronghold.

Edelgard pushed forward into the stairwell and leaped into the center, falling through the tower and landing on the staircase below Myson. He skidded to a halt as he approached her, hurriedly stumbling back up and ducking under the swing of her axe.

“It’s over, Myson. We’ll take the weapon you stole from the camp,” she said as he frantically avoided her blade’s arcs, “and our victory will be complete.”

“‘Weapon?’” he asked quizzically.

Edelgard was taken aback. It wasn’t a weapon he’d stolen?

Myson took advantage of her distraction to leap across the stairwell behind Edelgard and hurry downward; she whirled around and rushed after him. Two arrows in rapid succession hit the stone stairs and bounced off, missing him by a hair; a third struck the tip of his tail and the tail writhed and jerked back as though it had a mind of its own. Myson threw a ball of black fire up the staircase, following the arrows’ trajectory back to their source; Hubert wrenched Bernadetta out of the way moments before the fireball consumed her head.

Huffing and panting, Myson reached the bottom of the staircase and hurried down the hallway at the bottom, with Edelgard mere paces behind him.

He flung a blast of razor-sharp wind at her; she ducked underneath it and kept apace, closing in on him. Fireball, bolt of lightning, flurry of icy needles, none of them slowed her down. She zigzagged across the floor, avoiding every spell he threw her way. The fear in his eyes grew wider, wider, as he neared the door at the end of the hallway. He knew he wouldn’t get to it. He knew Edelgard would strike him down first.

And strike him down she did.

Mere paces from the door he’d been so intent to reach, Myson fell to the floor, clutching at the axe wound stretching from hip to shoulder across his front, blood spilling from the gash and pooling around the floor.

Hubert, Bernadetta, and Matthias caught up to Edelgard as she stood over him with the head of her bloodied axe resting against the cold stone floor. Her chest heaved, her lungs and limbs burning from exertion. But she had done it.

That, she told herself, was for the children.

Myson let out a gurgling laugh, weak but venomous in its spite; a bubble of blood formed on his lip and popped to punctuate it. _“The ‘weapon’ we stole from the camp…”_ he rasped, swaying on his feet before crumpling to his knees, _“is behind this door… but I don’t think you’ll like to know what it is. Perhaps you should run along… and leave it to your imagination.”_

Edelgard considered ending him quickly with another swift strike of her axe, but felt he deserved a slower death. “Does it have anything to do with the pups you’ve been stealing?”

Myson looked up to her, a weak smile on his face. _“Oh… look at you. Such sentimentality from the Flame Emperor… What do_ you _think we’ve been doing to them, Edelgard? Implanting them with Crests, just as we did to your_ father’s _litter of rodents?”_ Another hoarse, raspy death-rattle of a laugh.

Edelgard felt her grip on her axe tighten, her blood boil in her veins. But she restrained herself. Striking him down and ending his suffering would only be doing him a favor. Instead, she pushed him aside with her foot and headed for the door.

 _“Wait!”_ Matthias cried out, rushing ahead of her. “The, uh, weapon… it’s really dangerous! If you step into that room, it could—kill you! Yeah! Stone dead in a second! There’s a reason I kept it hidden!”

“Kill her stone dead the second she sets foot in that room, you say?” Hubert said. He roughly grabbed Myson by the collar. The dying warlock’s head flopped on his shoulder, his neck so limp it might have been broken, his tongue lolling out of his mouth; but his ruined chest continued to rise and fall in spite of his mortal wound. “Lady Edelgard, step to the side of the door.”

Edelgard clung to the wall as Hubert made for the door, dragging along his sacrificial lamb. Matthias kept standing in front of the door, though, holding out his paws, until Hubert shoved him aside and flung the door open, quickly stepping to the side to avoid the attack Matthias had warned about as he heaved—with great difficulty (Hubert had never had much upper body strength)—Myson’s nearly-dead body into the room.

Neither he nor Edelgard looked into the room—just waited with bated breath to hear what happened to Myson.

Nothing happened.

Until Myson began to laugh.

“Oh, no,” Matthias moaned, “it’s worse than I’d thought! He must’ve gone mad at the sight of it!”

Edelgard rushed through the door after Myson and came to a dead stop. Her heart fell silent in her chest; her limbs grew leaden; the very blood in her veins seemed to turn to ice.

There was no weapon in the room beyond the door. In fact, there was nothing—the vast stone hall was almost empty. Only a squat, squarish glass bottle with a needle-nosed cap, just like the ones Hubert used in his poison collection, filled with a clear liquid. It stood four inches tall, not counting the spindly snout, and dominated the otherwise-empty room like some kind of pagan idol, its thick walls and the liquid within bending the flickering torchlight that passed through it to create distorted, rippled images of the world behind it.

Myson’s laughter grew stronger, even as the life ebbed from his broken body. _“Surprised, Edelgard?”_ he cackled.

Matthias rushed into the room. “Edelgard, I can explain! You see, th-that’s, uh—”

He let out a short, strangled gasp and was immediately silenced by a dagger’s blade leaping in front of his furry throat. “I do so hope you can explain, Matthias,” Hubert growled into his ear, pinning him in place from behind, “why these fiends had to ‘steal’ _my_ antidote… from _you.”_

Bernadetta hurried into the room. _“Edelgard! Look out, there might be a—”_ she cried out, but her outcry abruptly cut itself short as she caught sight of the vial. She gasped. “That’s…”

 _Antemorphus muridae._ The antidote to the poison that had so thoroughly upended Edelgard’s life and so many others. It was here, in the very room, looming before her like a colossus, gleaming like a beacon of hope.

The last hope. The Agarthans had planned to monopolize the poison and its antidote, killing or turning to their side those who could cast the magic spell behind its power. But they’d hit a snag procuring the herbal ingredients needed for the antidote, leaving Hubert’s little bottle from his private collection the only known supply of the antidote.

This was Matthias’ weapon. The missing key to the Agarthans’ own plans, squirreled away in an unknown refugee camp without their knowledge.

Edelgard looked to Matthias for an answer. He stared back at her with wide, wet, pleading eyes, eyes that spoke a silent plea for mercy and understanding. A plea she could not, _would_ not grant. This was beyond the pale.

“You had the antidote all along, didn’t you?” she asked him. Every word had to fight its way through her mind to the tip of her tongue, because a part of her wanted to do nothing but scream, howl wordless invective, spew angry bile until it burned him away. “When you brought us to your camp, you had it. Bernadetta and I could have changed back that very night. Am I correct?”

Matthias swallowed hard, the undulation of his throat pressing against the blade of Hubert’s dagger. “Yes,” he admitted, squeaking out his answer. “Yes, I-I’ve had it for f-four or five d-days now… you’ve got to understand, Edelgard, I—I know you don’t _like_ being a mouse, but anyway, I wasn’t gonna keep you like this _forever,_ just until after you’d helped us! Y’know, b-because… I mean, it was clear that you didn’t wanna help us out, and I knew you’d just _leave_ if I let you and Bernie become humans again, but I figured if I just… kept you… for a while, a few days, a week maybe, or two, you’d maybe help save us because you didn’t have anything better to do?”

Hubert dug his claws into Matthias’ side and pressed the knife harder against his throat, just enough to draw a single dark droplet of blood. “You insolent little malformed rat! You wanted to ‘keep her?’ Is that tiny thing you call a brain capable of even comprehending _who_ Lady Edelgard is? She is not _yours_ to keep!”

“I know, I know, I know!” Matthias blurted out, panicking. “B-But… I had to, y’know. I _had_ to. We’re dying here, y’know! When I turned you into a mouse, Edelgard, I—I had to make sure you _stayed_ that way! At least ‘til the Plague Rat was dead and you’d helped us mousefolk escape from the monastery…”

“You had no right involving her in your parochial affairs!” Hubert snarled. “Lady Edelgard, give the word and I will end this wretch’s life.”

Edelgard didn’t respond to Hubert’s request. Instead, she took a deep, calming breath, trying to quell all the screaming inside her head.

“It was you, then,” Bernadetta said to Matthias, her voice wavering. “You tried to poison her in the dining hall. And got me instead.”

Matthias nodded. “U-Uh-huh. That was me. I—I snuck into Hubert’s room, stole the poison and the antidote, and hid ‘em away. Then I dragged the poison over to the dining hall, climbed onto one of the chandeliers with it, and dripped a few drops into Edelgard’s cup. I had to leave quickly, accidentally left the poison behind on the chandelier, didn’t see if she drank it… but I was feeling pretty confident that night. Sure, I was a little worried when I didn’t see Edelgard later on as, uh, y’know, a mouse, but by the time I went back to get the poison, it was already gone. So, figured all I had to do was wait, so I waited. Two days I waited, then I found you two, and you were both mice! And I was so happy to see you! I was so glad it worked! Somehow!”

Of all the words Edelgard wanted to say to him, all she managed was, “Why?” Her life had been upended—hers and Bernadetta’s, and now the rest of her classmates’ and her professor’s too—and _he_ had been the catalyst? _He_ had set that chain reaction in motion? _He_ was behind it all?

This was why he’d found her and Bernadetta so quickly after they’d been turned into mice. This was why he hadn’t been anything more than mildly surprised to find out that the two of them were humans, why he’d seemed to know that she and Bernadetta hadn’t had the first clue how to be mice…

She hadn’t trusted him at first. And she’d been right to have her suspicions. She never should have let his earnestness, his cheerfulness, his guilelessness and affable innocence mislead her.

_“Why?”_

“The prophecy! The prophecy’s why! But, uh… y’know… the thing about prophecies,” he said, “is… you kinda gotta make ‘em come true yourself, right? I-I saw you and your friends fighting in that, y’know, tomb place a few months ago, uh, what was it called? The Goddess Rite or something? And you were there and you were strong and you were beautiful and I knew right then, right there, that if only you were, uh, a mouse—you’d fit the prophecy to a tee! So I planned things out and waited a bit and… took matters into my own paws.”

“Utter tripe,” Hubert spat. “You’ve been working for _them_ all along, haven’t you? Lady Edelgard, let me slit his throat. Nothing else stands in our way now that we’ve secured the antidote. Resources permitting, we can even change the other students back… though I daresay some of them are better off as mice.”

“It’s all true, I swear!” Matthias insisted. “I’m not working for these chuds, I’ve been fighting _against_ them! Edelgard, it was _you_ who said it was okay to do bad things to people if it was for the greater good, right? A-And _you_ had to do bad things for your goals, right? S-So you’re… you’re not _mad_ at me, right? Y-You can’t be; I mean, I’m just living by your ideals, right?”

His words stung her ears. Edelgard felt every concern and pang of sympathy she’d once had for him and his brethren evaporate. She clenched her fists, burying her claws in her palms. “You… _dare—!”_

“I had to do it. The prophecy _said_ that only a white mouse with a flowing mane and a blood-colored cape who wielded an axe with the strength of ten mice could defeat the Plague Rat and his raiders and lead us beyond the walls of Garreg Mach, and only _you—”_

 _“And where did that prophecy come from, Matthias?”_ a cold, low, cruel rasp of a voice boomed from above. Edelgard felt her white-hot anger freeze solid; her fur bristled, and she immediately felt the strength in her legs waver, threatening to crumple and send her falling to the floor. She looked up at the ceiling, as did Hubert and Matthias and Bernadetta—

The Plague Rat clung upside-down to the wooden rafters ribbing the stone ceiling, wreathed in shadow, hidden by the darkness. But there was no tapestry of scars marring his black fur anymore, nor was there a trace of the wounds Edelgard, Bernadetta, Dimitri, or Claude had inflicted on him over the past two days. And the lights in the black eye sockets of his rat-skull helmet were different—rounder, brighter, a pale yellowy-silver, like the shine of a full harvest moon high in the sky.

Edelgard had felt the Plague Rat’s conspicuous absence throughout her assault on this stronghold, a constant cold prickling in the back of her mind like the threat of a dagger dangling overhead. She’d known she would cross paths with him eventually, especially once Hubert had told her what the monstrous rodent intended to do with her. But, still reeling from Matthias’ revelation, she’d failed to imagine that _eventually_ could be _now._

Hubert’s grip on Matthias faltered, his eyes fixed on the looming behemoth above him, and the dagger slipped from Matthias’ throat.

 _“What did you tell them, Matthias?”_ the Plague Rat hissed, swinging down from the ceiling and landing in front of the vial of antidote with a thud that shook the floor and wrung trickles of dust from the ceiling. _“That it was a revelation from the Goddess? That an angel descended from on high to deliver it unto you?”_

“Uh…” Matthias picked himself up off the floor where Hubert had dropped him. “Actually, I told them the sword told me—the pups love stories with magic swords, y’see, so…”

The Plague Rat laughed. _“And where did you_ really _hear it, Matthias?”_

Matthias swallowed hard. “Um… Z-Zeke and I, we were fighting you, a-and we had you on the ropes, a-and then you picked yourself up off the floor and said…”

 _“‘Foolish rodents!’”_ the Plague Rat bellowed. _“‘Only a chosen savior—a mouse from afar, delivered by divine providence, with glossy fur as white as fresh snow, and a silken mane like liquid moonlight, and a cape stained crimson with the blood of the unrighteous—can truly defeat me!’”_

Matthias nodded. “Y-Yes. Exactly that.”

“Oh…” Bernadetta said. “So you’re not evil, you’re just…”

“An idiot,” Hubert said.

Matthias hung his head. “Yeah.”

The Plague Rat loomed like a titan over Edelgard, basking in perverse elation over the truths he’d wrung out. She had only ever encountered him as a savage brute, but there was a fierce and sadistic cunning lurking behind the bellowing, bloodthirsty monster who’d chased her before.

This was a surprisingly shrewd creature. Intelligent—enough so that Thales wanted him to replace _her._

This monster, this ghoul, this hellish specter… in the eyes of those who slither in the dark, he was her _equal._

Her _superior._

She was less than a rat to them.

The Plague Rat looked down at her, drool dripping from his muzzle. _“You do not seem like much of a savior_ now, _do you, Edelgard von Hresvelg?”_ He laughed, spittle flying out from beneath his bony helmet, and drew the massive serrated steak knife from its sheath at his back.

Hubert stepped in front of her, hellfire gathering in his paws. _“Lady Edelgard,_ run!” he hissed.

Edelgard didn’t run. Though she’d come so far in pushing back the weakness she felt in her body at the sight of rats, the revelation that the Plague Rat was so much more than he’d let on filled her anew with the terror she’d felt the first time she’d laid eyes on him.

The terror that left her standing there, frozen, eyes wide, mouth agape, head lifted to gaze into the beast’s eyes, too weak both physically and mentally to so much as raise a paw in her defense.

The terror that reduced her once more to a child in a dungeon.

 _“Now die, Edelgard!”_ the rat snarled. _“Here your life ends—and_ mine _begins!”_

Hubert shouted out and shielded her with his body as he flung out one paw to cast a spell. The burst of magic ripped through the air with a banshee’s scream. The Plague Rat’s moonlight eyes lit up with a starburst-shaped flash of light and Edelgard felt a rippling wave of heat wash over her. A gleaming arc of steel swinging through the air met a violet-purple cloud of dark miasma crackling with fire and lightning.

An instant later, glittering shards of steel filled the air, falling like snowflakes illuminated by a winter sun; the Plague Rat sidestepped the brunt of the blast, though, tossed his ruined knife aside, and grabbed the vial of _antemorphus muridae,_ stowing it under one arm as though it weighed nothing. Smoldering burns spewed wisps of black smoke from the rat’s fur; blood seeped out from under his patchwork plates of armor and dripped to the floor.

Hubert fell to his knees, a jagged shard of metal from the Plague Rat’s improvised sword biting into his shoulder, and yet flickers of dark energy still danced in his outstretched paw.

Bernadetta rushed to Edelgard’s side and fired two arrows in quick succession, one embedding itself in the Plague Rat’s chest, the other striking him in the shoulder. _“El, we have to run!”_ she shrieked, grabbing her by the arm and trying to yank her away.

Letting out an angered snarl, the Plague Rat ripped the arrow from his shoulder and swiped his claws at Bernadetta, who narrowly leaped out of the way with a panicked yelp. _“Do not speak her name!”_

Edelgard knew she needed to move—to _run._ But…

Hubert flung a swarm of black and violet sparks at the beast, crumpling to the floor from the exertion, blood spilling from his wounded shoulder. The cluster engulfed the Plague Rat as he beat a hasty retreat and leaped back up into the ceiling, swinging across the rafters. Smoke streamed from patches of burned fur; patches of his armor glowed orange in the shadows; the acrid smell of burning hair and roasted flesh filled the air as the Plague Rat threw himself at the door and scurried out of the room, still carrying the vial under one arm.

And just like that, the spell was broken, and Edelgard found herself unfrozen. She dropped to Hubert’s side and propped him up to inspect the wound he’d suffered. The shard of steel had cut deep, deep as an axe’s blade into his shoulder, wedging itself into his flesh down to the bone. His robes around the wound were sopping wet and the stench of blood stung Edelgard’s nostrils.

A pang of fear lanced through her heart. She’d worried about Hubert’s safety before. She’d told him time and time again that she wished he could leave her side and put his own life first. But he didn’t want to, he always insisted, even if he could. Still, he only had one life to give for his liege, and as his blood dripped to the floor, she feared that at long last, he was giving it.

“Hubert…”

 _“It’s only a flesh wound,”_ Hubert gasped weakly, struggling to push her away. _“Leave me, Lady Edelgard—you must take the others and pursue that beast! You cannot let him escape with the antidote…”_

“You need a healer.”

_“There is no time—I’d only slow you down. That vial is our last hope… we cannot let it slip through our fingers! Please, Lady Edelgard, go!”_

“Say no more; conserve your strength. Bernie,” Edelgard said, lifting Hubert to his feet, “take Hubert and find a healer. Dorothea, Linhardt, _anyone—”_

“You can’t go after that monster,” Bernadetta protested as Edelgard shoved Hubert’s limp and leaden body into her grasp. Her knees buckled under the weight of his body. “Th—Isn’t that exactly what he _wants_ you to do?”

“I won’t go alone,” Edelgard assured her. “I’ll find the others. Just take care of Hubert in the meantime.”

“But what if the Plague Rat—”

Edelgard leaned forward, letting the tip of her nose just barely meet Bernadetta’s, letting the tips of their whiskers brush ever so slightly against each other. _“Bernie, if the next time you see me,”_ she whispered, _“you aren’t sure if I’m truly myself, just ask me what I said to you right here, right now.”_

She leaned closer, letting her muzzle slip across Bernadetta’s cheek. She had to say something honest, something true—but something that nobody imitating her would ever think she would say.

 _“I need you,”_ she whispered into Bernadetta’s ear, tongue cleaving to a suddenly dry mouth, _“Bernie-Bear.”_

Bernadetta gasped. “El… But… Even though… h-how can you _trust_ me?”

“Like this,” Edelgard said to her, pushing her away and hurrying to the doorway. On her way, she passed Matthias, who remained on his knees, sword forgotten at his side, head bowed in shame. All she felt for him now was contempt; had she the time to spare, she would have struck him down right there with his own sword.

Before Edelgard could cross the threshold, Myson’s body stirred, even as the blood pooling beneath him oozed across the floor. He grabbed her by the ankle, looking up at her with dull, glassy eyes, and let out one last laugh. _“A powerful weapon it was indeed, wasn’t it?”_ he cackled as he breathed his last breaths. _“That Matthias boy warned you it would end your life. Now for one last work of magic: Watch and be amazed as we make your future…_ disappear!”

And with a triumphant death rattle, he fell silent, his grip went slack, and his chest heaved for the last time before going still.

* * *

Edelgard hurried onward, outward, traversing the city streets, using her claws to climb down the tiers that raised the citadel above the rest of the city. The Immaculate One had vanished and no longer terrorized the Agarthans. The city was in chaos around her—burning, falling apart at the seams, every inch aflame. Black smoke choked the air; the ruined remnants of the Agarthan army lay strewn across the streets, slain more by their leaders’ own scorched-earth tactics than by the efforts of the Alliance of Four Mouses. Here and there, she caught sight of a naked tail slithering across the ground into the shadows, but couldn’t tell if it was real or a trick of the flickering flames and the smoke stinging her eyes.

She wasn’t looking for the Plague Rat, though. Not yet. She knew she couldn’t face that thing alone. Not knowing what he aimed to do to her.

Byleth’s voice echoed through the soot-singed air; Edelgard thought she’d imagined it, then she felt air currents swirl around her whiskers, alerting her to something approaching from behind—

Panic seizing her—the Plague Rat approaching from behind?—she lashed out with her axe and _felt_ more than heard the blade ring out against an eldritch metal.

“Calm down,” Byleth said, disarming Edelgard with a forceful riposte. “It’s just me.”

The axe fell from Edelgard’s paw. A sick feeling twisted her stomach. “My—P-Professor, I’m sorry…”

“I hope our blades never meet like that again,” Byleth said. “What’s wrong? Where are Bernadetta and Hubert?”

“Hubert’s hurt; I sent Bernadetta with him to find a healer. Where’s everyone else?”

“Evacuating. As you can see,” Byleth said, gesturing around herself, “the city’s on fire.”

Dimitri, Dedue, Claude, and Dorothea rushed to the professor’s side. _“Edie!”_ Dorothea shouted. “Are you alright?”

“I’m fine.” Edelgard looked to Dimitri, half expecting him to try something… brotherly. Instead, to her relief, he looked away from her. “Where’s Cornelia?” she asked him.

“She has escaped us,” Dedue said.

“I can only hope she perishes in this blaze,” Dimitri said coldly. “That way, none of us need stain our hands with her wretched blood.”

“Dorothea,” Byleth said, putting a paw on the songstress’ shoulder, “Go find Bernadetta and Hubert in the citadel. Hubert’s injured. Bring them to the southern entrance and rendezvous with Rhea and the others.”

Edelgard felt another pang of fear stab at her heart. So the white monster she’d seen had indeed been the Immaculate One herself. How much did she know now?

Dorothea nodded. “Right away, Professor,” she said, suppressing a tremor in her voice, before scurrying away.

Edelgard explained what had happened in the depths of the citadel to Byleth, Dimitri, Dedue, and Claude as quickly as she could, and together, the five of them headed off in pursuit of the Plague Rat, though Dimitri kept staring daggers at her back. In his zeal to find Cornelia, he doubtless hadn’t had much time to reflect on his shouting match with her outside the citadel and remove his head from his rear.

“You’re lucky this Plague Rat is so much less agreeable than you,” Dimitri told her, scowling. “Forced to choose between two monsters, I will choose the lesser to side with… for now.”

“Then you understand my position,” Edelgard said.

“You think these fiends are the _lesser_ of two evils? What in all the world could be _more_ monstrous than them?!”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you, so I don’t see the need to answer that.”

“Enough, both of you,” Byleth said sternly. “If our wills are at odds with each other, we won’t make it out of here.”

“I understand that she is your student,” Dimitri said to her, glaring again at Edelgard, “but how can you defend her?”

Edelgard felt a twinge of guilt in her heart. Byleth had every right to no longer trust her. All these months she’d tried to gain her favor, opening up to her and appealing to her in the hopes that when the time was right, Byleth would be on her side—all for naught.

“Because she is my student,” Byleth answered, “and I know her better than you do, Dimitri. I don’t ask you to understand, but I expect us to work cohesively on the battlefield.”

Even amid all this tension, even in the flaming ruins of Mousehaven, Edelgard felt a warm spark of happiness flicker in her heart. “Thank you, my teacher,” she sighed gratefully.

Dimitri grumbled irritably and scratched at the dirty bandage wrapped over his eye.

The trail the Plague Rat left behind—splattered blood on the ground, the stench of rat and of burning flesh—was easy enough to follow, and the four of them tracked the beast westward, retracing their campaign through the city, through the remains of the exploded gatehouse in the western wall. Edelgard felt more and more unnerved as she and the rest of her posse retraced all their steps through the city in reverse, as though the Plague Rat was somehow turning back the hands of time. How far would he go? Back to the dungeon in Enbarr, somehow?

They finally cornered the Plague Rat on the pier where the boat Edelgard’s alliance had used to travel southward from Mousebrook that morning was docked. Unlike the city, the wooden pier that jutted out from the stone lip of the canal and hung over the putrid river was untouched—even if it hadn’t been spared from any of the fighting, the wood was too damp to burn.

With a glance over his shoulder and a sinister light in his glowing eyes that seemed to reflect an equally sinister smile, the Plague Rat threw the bottle onto the deck and leaped off the edge of the pier to follow it. He clung to the side of the deck like a barnacle, causing the boat to sway gently from the force of the impact, and hauled himself over the railing.

 _“You won’t get away so easily, dastard!”_ Dimitri shouted, rushing forward at Edelgard’s side. _“Pay with your life for every innocent soul you’ve cut down!”_

The Plague Rat grabbed the heavy braided ropes that connected the boat to the pier and anchored the boat in place, slashing at them with his bare claws to set the boat adrift. Claude fired a volley of arrows, striking the Plague Rat and forcing him to release his hold and reel backward as the frayed ropes keeping the boat docked began to unravel.

The ropes snapped and the boat immediately began to drift aimlessly, floating toward the center of the river and slowly beginning to drift its way downstream. With a flick of her wrist, Byleth extended the Sword of the Creator and buried the tip of its telescoped blade in the boat’s side, digging her heels into the pier to keep the boat from drifting. Dimitri dropped his spear and grabbed hold of her, wrapping his paws around the hers to better secure the sword; Dedue set aside his axe and hooked his arms around Dimitri’s shoulders to help anchor him. The three of them held the boat fast, keeping it from drifting any farther than the length of the sword’s extended blade.

The Plague Rat’s eyes lit up again and a pillar of fire burst up from the wooden pier, consuming it in an inferno. Undeterred, Edelgard lunged through the fiery vortex, squeezing her eyes shut and clutching her axe as searing flames briefly kissed her fur and skin—but she was swift, and barely felt the heat. She leaped into the air, feeling the cool air rushing through her fur as she hit the deck.

 _“Facing me alone?”_ the Plague Rat asked, laughing. _“Have you found your courage, Edelgard, or are you_ that _foolish?”_

Edelgard stiffened and felt her muscles seize up as a frigid wave of ice crept up her spine. She found herself clenching her jaw to hold back an altogether-uncharacteristic little whine. She forced it all down as though choking down a mouthful of bile. She wouldn’t allow herself to freeze in front of this monster again. She would face the Plague Rat. She would prove that none of the Agarthans’ foul machinations could best her.

Setting aside all doubt and all fear, letting the Crest of Flames burn her blood to a boil and melt away the rime that had frozen her in place, she lunged forward and with a heavy swing of her upraised arms brought her axe down on her foe.

The blade chewed through metal, fur, skin, flesh, meat, and sinew, stopping only when it hit bone. The Plague Rat screamed and raked his claws across Edelgard’s chest—the searing pain of four white-hot knives biting deeply into her skin was enough to loosen the grip Edelgard had on her axe and force her backward. She felt herself hit the floor, the back of her head cracking against the edge of the deck. Stars briefly speckled her field of view.

She’d felt it in that blow. Something familiar within the Plague Rat. Something familiar in his blood. The resonance of a similar Crest?

The Plague Rat reeled back. The axe was embedded dead center in his chest so deeply that it stood up on its own. Edelgard clenched a paw to her chest to try and dull the pain of her own wounds.

 _“It’s over,”_ she spat at him. _“This body,”_ she said, forcing herself to her feet through a haze of pain, _“will_ never again _be a weapon for those who slither in the dark!”_

The Plague Rat let out a derisive laugh and tore the axe from his chest. Due to his stature, in his paw it looked like a child’s toy. _“This_ is _over,”_ he growled, taking another step backward as the deck rocked from the motion of the river’s current. _“Yes… over… for_ you, _Edelgard!”_

With a swift strike of the axe, the Plague Rat shattered the top of the glass bottle, exposing its contents to the open air. Edelgard realized what he aimed to do and threw herself at him, claws and fangs bared. She latched onto him and dug her claws into his shoulders, buried her teeth in the side of his neck, and felt hot blood gush into her mouth. The metallic stench flooded her nostrils and overwhelmed the sickly musk of rat surrounding her foe like a baleful aura. She kicked at him, prying her feet into gaps in his armor to gouge his flesh with her claws, all the while gnawing on his neck. She fought like an animal, bit and scratched like the rats that had tormented her all those years ago. She had to protect the antidote no matter what, no matter what, _no matter what—_

The Plague Rat leaped into the air and hit the deck with all his might, pinning Edelgard between the weight of his own body and the floor. She choked on the blood pouring down her throat; her grip weakened and the Plague Rat pulled himself away and rose to his feet, standing tall over her like a demonic beast.

Byleth and Dimitri leaped onto the deck behind her, fur slicked and dripping wet, and hurried to her side. With sword, spear, and axe, Edelgard and the other two forced the Plague Rat back with a flurry of blades. He parried their weapons with fang and claw alone, fighting like a wild beast, catching Dimitri’s spear in his mouth and wrenching it out of his grip.

An arrow shot by Claude from his vantage point on the pier struck the Plague Rat in the chest, and another, and another, and as he whirled around and rushed after the bottle of antidote another volley of arrows made a pincushion of his back, pinning his cape down. The Sword of the Creator lashed out, striking him from hip to shoulder, shearing away his cloak and cutting through armor like a knife through warm butter.

The Plague Rat fell on all fours and scurried with inhuman (of course) speed across the deck; with a flash of his claws, Byleth reeled back, blood pouring into her eyes from a deep laceration on her forehead. His eyes lit up again; Byleth, still wiping the blood out of her eyes with her sleeve, barely brought up her sword in time to slice through the blossom of fire that erupted in front of her and extinguish the blaze.

Edelgard picked herself up and lunged for the bottle, her claws scratching the glass. She tightened her grip around its sides as best she could, clutching it as though it were more precious than gold or diamonds.

The Plague Rat ripped it from her grasp and snatched it up, jagged glass biting into his paws. Edelgard wrenched it away from him, her claws squeaking as they bit into the solid glass and dragged agonizing furrows across the bottle. It felt as though her claws were going to rip themselves out of her fingertips.

Dimitri picked up his spear and drove it into the rat’s side, twisting the blade savagely to extract an agonized howl from the beast. _“Why won’t you just die already?!”_ he cried out as the Plague Rat delivered a savage kick to his midsection, throwing him across the deck.

As the Plague Rat’s grip loosened, Edelgard strengthened her own grip on the bottle, her heart pounding as she realized how _close_ she was to ending this nightmare—all she had to do was drink just a few drops to be rid of all this fur, this tail, all these damned inconveniences—

Something slammed into the back of her head. The whole world went dark and silent for an instant; when her sight returned Edelgard found the canal rushing up to meet her, the stench of the water so overwhelming that it was nearly suffocating enough on its own, and a scream already wrenching itself from her throat.

 _“Edelgard!”_ Byleth cried out.

Something wrapped itself tightly around her ankle, halting her descent with the tip of her snout a hair’s breadth from the surface of the water; she smacked into the ship’s hull, the force of the impact electrifying the jagged gashes running across her chest and knocking the wind out of her as fresh pain blossomed within her body.

Edelgard looked up and saw Byleth leaning over the railing, arm outstretched, clutching her by the ankle. Her slate blue-gray eyes were wide with worry. It was the most emotion Edelgard had ever seen her teacher show.

She also saw the Plague Rat upend the bottle of _antemorphus muridae_ over the side of the deck and drop the empty bottle into the river. Edelgard barely saw the bottle fall past her and hit the surface of the water, catching only a glimpse of it sinking into the languid currents as Byleth pulled her up.

It didn’t look real.

It looked fake. Like she’d imagined it. Imagined the decapitated bottle, its contents flowing into and becoming one with the river of sewage the boat drifted over. Imagined the bottle, now empty, now useless, falling overboard and joining the detritus swept up in the canal. Imagined her only chance at regaining her humanity vanishing before her eyes.

Byleth hauled her back onboard. _“Edelgard, are you alright?”_ she asked. Edelgard barely heard her. What she’d seen couldn’t have been real. The Plague Rat wouldn’t have…

 _“What,”_ Dimitri gasped, staring directly at the Plague Rat with shock and horror from across the deck, _“have you done?”_

That was when it hit her—that the Plague Rat had done exactly what she’d seen him do. She hadn’t imagined it. Edelgard felt a cold numbness blossom in her chest. For a second, she thought she might have been dying.

She looked up at him, still struggling to accept what she’d seen, struggling to grasp any shred of doubt she could muster. It had to be a trick. A fake. An illusion. Maybe the bottle was a decoy or…

 _“I told you you would die like a rat once, didn’t I, El?”_ the Plague Rat chuckled, looking directly at her. _“Now all your friends get to join you… just like old times.”_

 _“You monster!”_ Dimitri snarled, snatching up Edelgard’s forgotten axe and throwing himself at the Plague Rat with unrestrained fury, striking at him again and again with brutish efficiency.

With one last laugh, the Plague Rat backed away and threw himself overboard to escape the savage onslaught, vanishing with a splash into the putrid river and leaving Edelgard, her teacher, and her stepbrother unmoored and adrift.

As the Plague Rat disappeared, Dimitri let out a furious, ragged, almost feral scream of rage and threw his axe against the deck with enough force to put a hole in the floorboards.

Edelgard felt something hot and wet fall on her cheeks.

It couldn’t be…

She tried to take a breath, but even so much as the tiniest morsel of air hit the growing lump in her throat and stopped.

She couldn’t be…

Her chest heaved. A blurry film slipped over her eyes.

It wasn’t possible.

She clasped her paws so hard they bled.

 _He_ couldn’t really be…

Her mind went blank. Devoid of conscious thought, empty save for a faint voice, familiar but only barely, long lost to time and trauma. _Fine! Stay here and die like a rat, El! Just like all the others!_

She tried to speak, to say something, to say _anything,_ but couldn’t. All that came out was a weak, hoarse, whispered squeak.

For the first time since the day the last of her siblings had died, for the first time in nearly seven years, for the first time in what felt like a lifetime, Edelgard felt tears roll down her cheeks.

* * *

“Why,” Byleth murmured, dazed, as she held Edelgard close to her. “Why was it not enough…?” No matter what she’d done, no matter how many times she’d turned back time with Sothis’ help, she had seen either Edelgard vanish beneath the waves or the antidote. She hadn’t been able to save one without sacrificing the other.

Sothis hovered at her side, compassion softening her sad face. She was weary: in today’s grueling assault, Byleth had made use of her power as many times as she could—if she hadn’t saved Edelgard the last time, there would have been no going back.

She rested a ghostly, insubstantial paw on Byleth’s shoulder in a small gesture of comfort. “There, there. If turning back time was not enough to stop that beast, then what has come to pass must be fate.” She wrung her paws morosely, her whiskers twitching, and let out a sigh. “Cruel fate, but fate nonetheless. I am sorry, Byleth. For us… for the little ones.”

 _“Dimitri! Edelgard! Teach!”_ Claude called out, hauling himself up over the side of the boat onto the deck. He was sopping wet, his slick and sodden fur clinging to his skin and his drenched clothes weighing him down. He rushed to Dimitri’s side. “Did I just see what I _think_ I saw?”

Dimitri gave no response, merely staring straight ahead as Edelgard did, though no tears stained his cheek. He was in shock.

Dedue climbed aboard after Claude and rushed to the dumbstruck prince’s side. “Your Highness…” he intoned. Dimitri did not respond even to him.

Claude waited for Dimitri’s silence to last an uncomfortable few seconds. “I’ll… take that as a yes,” he said, crestfallen. He bowed his head, staring aimlessly at the wooden boards beneath his feet. “Gods dammit,” he muttered.

Byleth felt Edelgard shudder and drew her closer. A tiny whimper escaped the princess’ mouth as she sniffled and struggled to regain her composure. Byleth had never seen her like this before; she knew what Edelgard had gone through as a child, but Edelgard had always spoken of it with such quiet, stoic reservation that it was easy to believe she was always in control of her emotions. She softly stroked Edelgard’s hair and let her rest her head on her shoulder. It was the least she could do for her. As her professor and as her friend.

She knew she’d made the right decision. If she had saved the antidote but left Edelgard to drown—with her wounds, she wouldn’t have been able to swim, and no doubt the filthy water would have infected those livid gashes drawn across her chest—she never would have been able to face herself, let alone her other students, or Seteth or Rhea or her father. But she also knew that that vial had been the only option she knew of to return the mice down here to a human state. No one, not even Hubert, had expected to find it down here.

“I do not understand, though,” Sothis said. “That beast needed the antidote as much as we did, if I understand his plan correctly. Why dispose of it? What is the sense in destroying his own victory?”

Her question went unanswered. Only Byleth could hear her, and Byleth had no answers for her.

“It has to be a trick,” Claude said, rapping Dimitri on the shoulder to try and get some response from him. “It _has_ to be. There’s no way of knowing the antidote was actually _in_ that thing to begin with. Odorless, colorless, tasteless—it’s the same as water. They could have swapped it into a different bottle. Teach, back me up here. Who in their right mind would do this?”

 _“He_ would do this,” Edelgard croaked, her voice hoarse.

Dimitri snapped out of his reverie. “‘He’ would do this? _Who?_ What is this Plague Rat? Why did he call you ‘El?’ How does he _know_ you?” He grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her. “What manner of fiend is he, Edelgard? A former _ally_ of yours among these monsters? _Tell me who he is!”_

Edelgard was silent for a while, barely focusing on Dimitri’s face, refusing to meet his eye as she stared ahead into the darkness, wide-eyed, haunted.

“He’s my brother,” she answered.

In the distance, the city of Mousehaven let out its last gasp and the last remaining bombs planted within it erupted, tearing the few freestanding structures within it apart and cultivating new blossoms of flames like crimson flowers in the dark.

Catherine ran across the pier, Rhea trailing by her side, with a length of rope spooled over her shoulder. _“Byleth! Catch!”_ she called out, hurling the end of the rope across the canal with all her strength.

Still holding Edelgard safely by her side, Byleth nodded to Claude, who scurried to the stern of the boat to catch the end of the rope before they sailed past it and left it floating in the water. Claude tied his end to the railing, Catherine tied hers to the pier, and slowly but surely, with Dedue stepping in to help, they reeled the boat back in.

As the port side of the ship finally bumped against the pier, Byleth’s eyes met Rhea’s, and the bittersweet light in the archbishop’s green eyes—her smiles were always bittersweet, pained, in a sadly wistful way—faded.

* * *

Seeing the sunlight again was like awakening from a nightmare. As she stood at the end of the tunnel leading out of Abyss, Bernadetta felt as though she were trapped in that strange morning limbo between waking and sleep where her fears and anxieties from her dreams slowly bled away.

The tunnel opened just past the monastery’s southern wall, into the Sealed Forest. Ancient trees soared into the sky, gargantuan beyond imagining to a mouse’s perspective. Sunlight filtered through the canopy, leaving dappled patterns of shadow and light across the grass and moss that covered the ground. Adjacent to the tunnel, the canal opened into a placid river.

Alois patted her heartily, but gently, on the back. “A sight for sore eyes, isn’t it?”

The rest of the Alliance of Four Mouses had gathered in the clearing just beyond the entrance, surrounded by the academy faculty and the monastery’s resident knights. Bernadetta recognized the other house’s professors, Hanneman and Manuela; among the knights she recognized Captain Jeralt, Professor Byleth’s father, as well as Shamir and Gilbert. Each of the humans carried a wicker basket, presumably for transporting the students back to the monastery. Though they loomed like giants, they tended gently to the injured students (and the injuries, though none were mortal, were numerous). Seteth stood back from the others with Flayn at his side.

Bernadetta took her first step onto the ground and, for the first time in over four days, felt cool, damp grass beneath her feet instead of stone. It was a shock—it was so soft that she almost feared that the ground would collapse beneath her feet and swallow her up. She tensed up.

Alois put his paws on her shoulders, steadying her. “Easy there.”

She took a deep breath, tried to relax, and took another shaking step across the grass, her toes sinking gently into the dirt with every step. She’d hardly paid much attention to grass before, but now it came up past her waist—walking through it was like wading through a dense jungle. A dense, ticklish jungle.

She laughed. The ground was soft, the air was crisp and sweet to taste and smell, and the sunlight was warm on her cheeks. She’d never missed being outside so much!

“A sight for sore eyes…” Dorothea stepped out next, cradling Hubert’s unconscious body, and breathed deeply through her nose. “And a smell, too.” She smiled. “I thought I’d never smell something that wasn’t burning again.”

 _“Bernadetta!”_ Ferdinand shouted out, sprinting full tilt across the clearing.

 _“Dorothea!”_ Petra cried out, following him.

Ferdinand wrapped his paws around her and cradled her. His cloak hung in tatters over his shoulder, his fur singed and stained with the scent of ash and blood. “I am so glad you are alright. I meant to keep an eye on you, but as soon as we stormed the citadel, I lost track of you…”

“It’s okay,” Bernadetta gasped, trying to squeeze out of his grip. “I was with Edelgard. I was safe.”

“Edelgard?” Ferdinand pulled away and looked over her shoulder, into the cavernous, dark mouth of the tunnel. “Where is she? Is she okay?”

Bernadetta looked back into the tunnel. “I hope so.”

“She’s with the Professor,” Dorothea said. Petra ran to her side and helped her set Hubert’s heavy, limp body down on the ground. “I’m sure she’s okay.”

“Ah, that’s a relief.” Ferdinand sighed and ran a paw through his dust- and ash-stained auburn hair. “As long as she is with the Professor, there is no need to worry.” He looked down at Hubert. “Is he…”

“Stable,” Dorothea said as Petra gently stroked her fur. “That’s the most I can do now,” she added, sighing. Bernadetta could tell by the slump of her shoulders and the droop of her whiskers that she was spent. “Might be a while before he wakes up, so if you’ve ever entertained the thought of petting the infamous Hubert von Vestra, now’s probably your only chance.”

He stepped back. “I… do not think I will take that chance.”

Bernadetta cautiously knelt down and gently laid her paw on Hubert’s forehead. She held it there for about a second before a twitch of his whiskers startled her and she hurriedly backed away.

She followed the rest of her classmates across the clearing, but kept glancing back toward the entrance to Abyss and hoping that Edelgard and Byleth would come through it next. She sat down at a distance from the others, keeping a wary eye on the giants milling around the clearing while basking in the sunlight, listening to the babbling creek in the distance and the telltale songs of birds and feeling the grass gently rustle around her.

She closed her eyes and laid down, resting her paws against her chest. Her shoulders hurt. Her arms felt like they were going to fall off. Her feet hurt so much that it felt like someone had cut all her skin off. Her head ached, her eyelids were weighing against her eyes, and even her tail ached. But she didn’t feel bad. At this moment, if anybody had offered to her the chance to return to her room, she might have decided to just stay here.

 _“Excuse me,”_ she heard Ferdinand’s voice say.

“Aah!” Bernadetta yelped and sat up ramrod-straight, her eyes flying open. “I-I’m sorry I didn’t bring Edelgard with me, she ran off and told me to s-stay behind and look after Hubert, s-so if anything bad happens to her, i-it’s not my—”

“Bernadetta, calm down,” he said, sitting down next to her. “I have no reason to be cross with you.”

“Ah. I… Y-You startled me,” she said, resting her paw on her chest as her pulse steadied.

“I’m sorry. I only meant to speak with you. I… am afraid I have something terrible to confess to you.”

She thought about Dimitri’s fight with Edelgard and Matthias’ revelation and felt a pit open up in her stomach. “I’ve had enough terrible confessions today, I think,” she told him.

“Ah.” He stared glumly into the grass. “I see. But still, I have a duty to let you know the truth.” He took a deep breath. “I… That evening a few days ago—by the Goddess, it feels like a lifetime—when we all went to the dining hall to lift your spirits… Perhaps I should explain. When Sylvain was bothering you, I became worried, as I had heard rumors of him being… intractable toward women, so I switched my cup with yours in case he had done something to it. But Hubert had switched Edelgard’s cup with mine, and… therefore, I am responsible for all of this. I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me.”

As far as confessions went, that wasn’t so bad. “Well… you weren’t the one who poisoned us in the first place. So I think I can forgive you.”

Ferdinand smiled, but it was bittersweet; his eyes were still glum, and he didn’t look her way. “You have my gratitude. Still… had I not acted so rashly, you would not have ended up in here. You would not have been trapped with Edelgard in Abyss, and would not have suffered this trauma.”

“No, I wouldn’t have. I’d have been holed up in my room while the rest of you went off to find her.” Bernadetta laughed and laid back down. “But…”

Edelgard had told her that she was glad that out of all her classmates to have ended up down there with her, it had been her.

“I’m glad,” she said, “I got to know her better.”

“That is an incredible privilege, I must admit,” he said. “But Edelgard is so… intense, especially given what she has d… Well, I would be remiss to believe anything those fiends claimed about her, but I digress. I worried she would be… difficult for you.”

“Well… we had our ups and downs… but she’s sweet, once you get to know her.”

He laughed. “I do not mean to offend you or belittle your horrible experiences down in Abyss, but if Edelgard thinks of you as a friend, then… I might find myself envious of you.”

“There’s no need for that,” Bernadetta said. “I’m still the same old Bernie; nothing to be jealous about.”

Ferdinand shook his head. “I can already see you have changed a great deal in these past few days. Not in the sense that you are, er, three inches tall, covered in fur, and have a tail.” His own tail twitched. “But you do seem a bit braver.”

“Yeah, I… guess I’ve gotten a little more confident.”

His eyes lit up. “So perhaps you will spend more time outside of your room now!”

“Let’s not get carried away.” Bernadetta snapped the tip off a blade of grass and brushed it idly against her palm. “Huh… Bernie’s confident now.”

She closed her eyes and let the sun beat down on her, basking in its warmth, in the cool autumn air, and hummed to herself a tuneless little melody.

“I hope she’s okay,” she mumbled, her thoughts turning once again to Edelgard.

“If anybody can vanquish the last of those fiends, I am sure it would be her,” Ferdinand assured her. “As Hubert often says, Lady Edelgard is without equal on the battlefield. I can only hope that someday I will change that, but for now, it is true.”

But a doubting refrain sang through her mind. She knew what the Plague Rat wanted from Edelgard. “But…”

“Have faith in her, Bernadetta.”

“You don’t understand.” Bernadetta felt a vise squeeze her heart and lungs and her quickening pulse throbbing in the back of her mind. “S-She’s… a-and the Plague Rat wants to—”

“I know. But she would never let that happen.” Ferdinand laid a paw on her shoulder. “Calm down.”

“You don’t understand—y-you’ve never _s-seen_ the Plague Rat! H-He’s terrifying, he’s huge, he’s—e-even El is afraid of him! Wh—When she sees him, she—it’s like she f-freezes up, a-and it’s always up to me to… but she doesn’t have me r-right now! I’m s-stupid… I never should’ve left her side—I’m a horrible friend!”

“There, there.” Ferdinand slipped an arm under her back and scooped her up. “Calm down. The Professor is by her side, and if anybody can wrench victory from certain defeat, it is her.”

Bernadetta shook her head. “B-But what if… W-What if he _gets_ her? What if he—what if he takes her body, a-and she comes out of there but it’s not _her?”_ Each breath she took came shallower and faster than the last, her heartbeat fluttering like a hummingbird’s wings. Her claws dug into the hem of her cloak. Tears blinded her. If Edelgard fell against that beast, it would be her fault. All her fault. She shouldn’t have let Alois guide her outside with Dorothea and Hubert—she should have run back into that city and caught up with Edelgard. She should have been there. Edelgard could be worse than dead— _worse than dead—_

She felt a paw run gently through her hair, claws ever-so-gently scraping the back of her ear.

“There, there, Bernadetta,” Ferdinand said softly as he petted her. “There, there.”

She sniffled and coughed as her pulse rate slowed and her shoulders loosened, her fists slowly unclenching, and her breath came a little less unsteadily to her.

“Surely Edelgard will return, as surely as the sun rises in the morning. Even if there are clouds covering the horizon from east to west and north to south, you still know the sun will rise.”

“But…” she croaked. “But what if she _does_ return, but it’s not her, a-and she tricks us and kills us all in our sleep or something?”

“Well…” He lightly scratched the nape of her neck. Bernadetta rested her cheek against his chest. She had to admit, it was hard to feel anxious when someone was petting her. “You are her friend now. If that foul Plague Rat takes her body for his own, then surely there is something you can ask her that only the real Edelgard would know. No one else would be better suited to spotting an impostor Edelgard, save perhaps for Hubert. But that will not happen. The Professor will not allow it.”

“The Professor will not allow it,” Bernadetta repeated. “Yes… yes, you’re right. She’ll be fine. She’ll be totally fine. She’s going to walk out through that tunnel a-and she’s gonna be fine!”

“That’s the spirit, Bernadetta!” Ferdinand said, gently brushing the fur on her shoulder. “You can be quite a morbid person sometimes. I can see why they called you ‘Spooky Bernie’ once.”

“What?” She looked up at him. “The-They called me _what?”_

“When I was a boy, I heard rumors of a quiet little girl who spent her days lurking in the dark with a needle and thread, sewing dolls of her enemies and making cursed effigies of them. The other children called her that. They were terrified of her.” Ferdinand sighed. “Truth be told, Bernadetta, when the term began here at the academy, I was quite grateful to discover that you were… _you,_ and not the Spooky Bernie I’d heard about.”

“C-Cursed dolls? I don’t make cursed dolls! I—I make cute little dolls of carnivorous plants! O-Or at least I try to make them cute… I-I guess they’re an acquired taste, a-and someone who doesn’t like weird things like that might think they were s-scary, but…”

Ferdinand laughed. “Carnivorous plants?”

Bernadetta nodded. “Yeah! They’re r-really exotic plants from far away, and they get their food by trapping bugs inside them and _digesting_ them! They’re really interesting, but… but I guess they don’t make a very good bouquet…”

“I would like to see those dolls of yours. That is, provided you are comfortable showing them.”

“Oh, you wouldn’t like them. They’re an acquired taste, and really, nobles should prefer _beautiful_ flowers…”

“I think I might rather enjoy a fascinating flower than a beautiful one,” Ferdinand said. “Hmm. Maybe that is why Dorothea has so often compared me to a bee.”

A shout rang out across the clearing. Bernadetta shot back up, her ears twitching, her heart pounding, her breath hanging in her lungs.

 _“It’s Edelgard!”_ someone had shouted.

There was a clamor and commotion as the humans looming overhead, tall as trees, converged on the foreboding black hole in the monastery’s wall. Bernadetta scrambled to her feet and rushed through the grass, darting between one of the knights’ legs. Dread and hope battled, equally matched, within her.

Archbishop Rhea stood next to Professor Byleth, who had an arm laid across Edelgard’s shoulders to keep her upright; Dimitri, Claude, and Dedue stood behind them. There was a gloomy air about them all, save for Rhea herself, whose placid smile seemed oddly nostalgic in a strange, wistful way.

Edelgard in particular looked _terrible._ Her whiskers and ears drooped. It seemed she could barely stand on her own. Layers of blood and ash and soot stained her once-white fur, and her clothes were ragged. Though any wounds she’d had had been healed, four ragged gashes ran through her shirt over her heart. But beyond her physical condition, it was her soul that seemed the most wounded. Her eyes were red-rimmed, the fur around them stained, and her gaze was aimless and unfocused.

 _“El!”_ Bernadetta cried out, running to her. “El, are you okay?” She took Edelgard’s paws in hers. “What’s wrong? Edelgard?”

Edelgard regarded her, a faint but brief spark of recognition flaring in her eyes. “Bernadetta…” she whispered, her voice hoarse.

“Yes, it’s me…” Bernadetta looked to Byleth. “Professor? What happened? What’s wrong?” She looked back to Edelgard. “El, are you…” That horrible thought, the fear that the Plague Rat had _gotten_ her, ran through her mind. “Are you… _you?”_

Edelgard’s arms snapped around Bernadetta’s waist like the iron jaws of a mousetrap, tearing the breath from her lungs. Bernadetta found herself pressed against Edelgard’s chest, feeling her heartbeat throb, her claws dig into her back. Edelgard held her close, held her tight, leaned in close until her whiskers tickled her cheek and the tip of her snout brushed against her ear.

Bernadetta’s pulse kept rising. What if it wasn’t Edelgard? What if the Plague Rat had taken her body and Byleth hadn’t known? What if Edelgard—or that monster, wearing her body like a suit of armor—snapped her back like a twig right this instant? Was she going to die here? Her heart struggled to break free of her ribcage and leap out of her chest.

Edelgard’s breath hitched. _“I need you, Bernie-Bear,”_ she gasped, shuddering before falling limp against her shoulder, her grip loosening, her chest heaving. Bernadetta’s anxiety and worry evaporated, and with a relieved sigh and a welcome warmth rushing into her heart, she wrapped her up in a tight embrace.

A shadow fell over them. Bernadetta lifted her head and glanced upward as she tightened her grip on Edelgard. Captain Jeralt knelt over them, setting down a large (of course, to a mouse, _everything_ was large) wicker basket on its side and laying his upraised hands on the ground beside them. His craggy, granite-carved face, though hard and stony, carried a warm smile and a kindly crinkle around his eyes.

“Welcome back, kiddo,” Jeralt said to Byleth, his low and rough voice a half-whisper. “Come on, let’s get you and your kids back to the monastery.”

Byleth stepped onto Jeralt’s waiting hand and Bernadetta half-carried, half-dragged Edelgard onto his other palm, and once they were both secured in their perches, he rose to his feet and held them high above the ground. The basket which carried Dimitri and the other remaining students hung from the crook of his elbow.

“Alright,” Jeralt called out to his fellow knights, “let’s move out! Keep a steady grip on your baskets so the ride isn’t too bumpy.”

Flayn rushed to Jeralt’s side. “Captain Jeralt, sir?” She loomed over the hand Bernadetta and Edelgard sat in. “May I hold Lady Edelgard and Bernadetta, please? It would free up one of your hands.”

“Now, Flayn,” Seteth said, “let Captain Jeralt handle this himself.”

“No, no, I’d welcome the help.” Jeralt looked down. Bernadetta found herself trapped between the paternal twinkle on his craggy face and the saccharine softness of Flayn’s expression, both of them looming overhead like terrifying colossi. “That is, if the little ladies are okay with it.”

“Um… s-sure, I guess,” Bernadetta stammered.

Jeralt leaned in. “Hmm? You’ll have to speak up.”

“Uh… sure! I guess!”

He nodded. “Well, then, Flayn, here you go,” he said, slowly guiding his hand to her waiting palm.

“Now be gentle with them,” Seteth cautioned her as Bernadetta carried Edelgard from Jeralt’s rough, calloused hand to Flayn’s soft, smooth palm. “You are holding the future Emperor of Adrestia.”

Flayn nodded. “Yes, Big Brother, of course!” She took her free hand and slowly, gently, rested the tip of her finger on Bernadetta’s forehead. “Oh, Bernadetta, I am so glad to see you and Lady Edelgard again!”

A relieved smile softened Seteth’s stern features. “We’ve done it, Lady Rhea,” he sighed to the wicker basket Jeralt was carrying. “It’s over. We’ve won.”

From the way Edelgard was acting, though, it didn’t seem to Bernadetta like anybody had won. _What happened, El?_ she wanted to ask, but it seemed obvious that Edelgard, who clung to her side silently, was in no position to answer right now.

She let Edelgard rest her cheek against her chest and gently combed her fur as Flayn’s finger softly, soothingly scratched between her ears. “It’s okay, El. It’s gonna be okay. We’re going home.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The mystery of the Plague Rat, revealed:
> 
> IT'S ME, EDELGARD! IT WAS ME ALL ALONG EDELGARD!
> 
> [YOU ALL BOUGHT IT! EVEN MY IMMEDIATE FAMILY BOUGHT IT!](https://youtu.be/kujo7V9m0gk)
> 
> Those of you who called the Plague Rat being Liquid Snake... congrats! You were right!
> 
> Those of you who called Matthias being the original mouse-derer and holding onto the antidote... congrats! You were right!
> 
> Those of you hoping that this chapter would bring Edelgard and Dimitri closer together as stepsiblings... I'm sorry! Maybe next chapter! After all, there's still a Plague Rat to deal with...


	12. In the Court of the Rat King

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Safely returned to Garreg Mach, the missing students adjust to their new lives as mice and Edelgard grapples with the consequences of her defeat. But the danger has not yet passed—the Plague Rat still has plans for her...

“We’re escaping,” Anselm said. His mouth formed a grim line, pale lips as chapped and cracked as a vast expanse of salt flats and stained cherry-red with dried blood; his voice came out a hoarse whisper that whistled through the gaps in his teeth. A rat’s nest of tousled, tangled, matted hair, once black, now the steely gray of a sword’s blade, hung over his hooded eyes. His rat-bitten fingers drummed on the stone floor with ragged fingernails long enough to be considered claws.

Edelgard nodded. Anselm was her eldest sibling now, even if he was only less than a year older than her, and if he said they were escaping, they were escaping. She looked across the hall, past the bars of the cell she and Anselm shared. In the cell across from them, her two youngest siblings, Pascal and Hedwig, slept, curled in each other’s arms. Only the telltale rise and fall of their little chests reminded her that they were still alive. The rats nibbling on their toes didn’t seem to care, though, nor did the flies buzzing around their heads.

She shook the bars of her cell impotently, hoping to scare the rats away. _“Hey!”_ she shouted out. Her voice tore at the inside of her throat like sandpaper. _“Get away from them!”_

The rats squeaked smugly and kept eating. Edelgard was helpless to do anything but watch their bloodied teeth, stained red as strawberries, sink into her youngest sister’s flesh. Ribbons of blood trickled down her skin.

 _“No, stop!”_ Edelgard shouted, hot tears cutting through the blood and grime caked on her cheeks. She rattled the bars again. _“Get away from her! Get away from Heddy!”_

Anselm stood up, braced his shoulder against the door to the cell, and pushed. Edelgard could feel the major Crest of Seiros—and something else—surging through his blood like a strange pressure buzzing in the back of her ears, strengthening, if only for a moment, his emaciated frame long enough for the lock on the door to snap and the bars to swing open.

He hit the floor like a sack of flour. Edelgard crawled to his side and helped him to his feet. Standing up made every joint in her body crack and pop, and she felt lightheaded. “Are you… okay, Ansy?”

Anselm nodded. “I’m fine, El. Let’s go.”

Edelgard looked over to her younger siblings’ cell and inched over to it, shaking the bars. _“Stop eating her!”_ she snapped at the rats nibbling on Hedwig’s exposed flesh. She rattled the bars again and the rats perked up and scurried away. One slithered over her foot; Edelgard yelped and nearly fell backward, only for Anselm to catch her.

“Shut up! You want us to get caught?” he hissed in her ear. “Come on.” He started down the hall, then noticed Edelgard wasn’t following behind him. “El? Come _on!”_

“What about Heddy and Pasc?” she asked him.

“We’ll come back for them later,” Anselm said.

“What if they get hurt while we’re gone?”

“They’d slow us down. They’re too little.” Anselm backtracked, grabbed Edelgard by the wrist, and hauled her away. His fingernails dug into her skin deeply enough to cut ragged crescents into her flesh. A few droplets of blood welled up where he broke the skin.

“We can’t just _leave_ them!” Edelgard protested, wrenching her hand free of his grasp. Four stinging, ragged cuts ran down the length of her wrist, blood dripping onto the floor.

“They can’t come with us!”

“I’m not going if they’re not going!” She stomped her bare foot on the cold, hard floor. “And that’s final!”

“Fine!” Anselm snarled. “Stay here and die like a rat, El! Just like all the others!” And with that, he stormed down the hall.

Edelgard looked down at Pascal and Hedwig one last time. Pascal had streaks of gray and white in his hair, long and curly locks that had once been a brilliant and glossy aquamarine just like his mother’s; Hedwig had inherited the same pale chestnut hair as her father, just like Edelgard, but her hair was now almost as silvered as his even though she was only eight years old. Edelgard wondered with a pang of horror if that was happening to her own hair, too—she hadn’t seen herself in a mirror in over a year now.

Instead of staying behind with Pascal and Hedwig while her older brother futilely tried to fight his way past the guards, she decided to follow him.

She curled her fingers around the bars and rested her head against them, letting the cold metal press against her temples. “I’ll come back for you,” she whispered to little Pascal and littler Hedwig before hurrying off to catch up with Anselm before he got too far ahead.

Together, she and Anselm passed the empty cells that had once held their older brothers and sisters. Not all the bloodstains and puddles of filth left over from their inhabitants had been cleaned out—some remained, indelible as grave markers.

“When we get back to Father and tell him what Duke Aegir and Uncle Volkhard is doing,” Edelgard said, “he’ll put a stop to all of this.”

“We’re not going back to Father,” Anselm said.

“Why not? We’re underneath the Royal Palace now. It’ll be easy to find him.”

“Exactly. We’re underneath the palace. He can’t _not_ know we’re here.” He curled his hands into fists. “He and Uncle Volkhard are in on it.”

Edelgard was scandalized. “Maybe he wants to save us, but can’t!”

“He’s the _emperor,_ El. He can do anything he wants!”

Her heart sank. Anselm was right, wasn’t he? _But he’s so_ nice, she wanted to say—but Uncle Volkhard had been nice, too, and Duke von Aegir had been nice, and Marquise von Vestra was… okay, _he_ wasn’t nice, but Hubert was, at least.

Hubert! That was it!

“Maybe we can find Hubert,” Edelgard suggested. She thought he and his father might still be in Enbarr. “We can trust him. He’ll protect us. He can hide us in the attic and feed us scraps until Uncle Volkhard stops looking for us.”

Anselm shook his head. “No, we’ll sneak into the city and try to find a Knight of Seiros. _They’ll_ help us. They work for the Goddess.”

 _The Goddess doesn’t want to help any_ _of us,_ Edelgard wanted to tell him. Dagmar had prayed more fervently than anyone else, and where had that gotten her? Just as dead as the others.

She followed Anselm down the halls. The twisting, gloomy, cold corridors seemed to stretch on forever, forever, forever, and the longer she walked, the farther she seemed to be from her brother. Her breath stung her weak and aching lungs, the soles of her feet burned, her heartbeat throbbed in her ears. _“Ansy? How much farther?”_ she called out.

Anselm didn’t answer. He only receded further into the distance, deeper into the shadows.

_“Ansy!”_

She froze in place.

_“Lady Edelgard…”_

The voice whispered in her ear from one of the abandoned cells lining the gloomy hallway. In one she saw Hubert sprawled on the floor, lifting his head at the sound of her voice and letting a weak smile cross his skeletal, malnourished face. His dark clothes bled into the darkness, making the rest of him stand out like a full moon. His hair was as pale as his skin, and a throbbing mass of discolored flesh crawled across his forehead, pulsating and oozing pus. _“Please… I beg of you…”_

“Hubert…” Edelgard took a step backward.

_“El… is that you?”_

She turned her head to focus on the next cell and saw beyond the bars a violet-haired girl tied to a chair, her gray eyes wide and pleading and hollow, her black and gold academy uniform reduced to tatters that exposed her thin, waifish frame and pale skin. The roots of her tangled mop of hair were bleached as white as fresh snow.

“El…” Bernadetta smiled, the shadows cutting across her gaunt face deepening. “It’s you…” She struggled weakly, almost perfunctorily, against the ropes that bound her wrists, writhing like a fish that had been out of the water for too long.

Edelgard took a step back, startled and unnerved. “B-Bernie… What are you doing here?”

“I k-knew you’d c-c-come, El,” Bernadetta sobbed, tears spilling down her cheeks and cutting furrows of clear, soft skin through the blood and grime staining her face. “I knew you’d come for me…”

“Bernie-Bear…” Edelgard gasped, rushing to the cell and grabbing onto the bars. “I’ll get you out of there! Just h-hold on, okay?”

The dungeons surrounded her. Everywhere she looked, there was another cell, another prisoner gasping her name with their last breath, another hand feebly reaching through the bars and pawing feverishly at thin air in a desperate attempt to reach her. Dorothea. Ferdinand. Petra. Caspar. Linhardt. All of them falling apart, their bodies rotting from the inside out, streaks of silver and white in their hair as testaments to the Agarthans’ experiments.

Her classmates. Her _friends._ What were _they_ doing here?

 _We trusted you,_ they wailed at her. _How could you do this to us?_

“I didn’t…”

_You betrayed us. You betrayed all of us._

“You could have followed me!”

_You led us here._

“Edie, why…?” Dorothea rasped, her lyrical voice little more than a death rattle, her face flush, her forehead beaded with sweat, rivers of blood pouring from her pale lips and dripping from her chin.

Anselm grabbed her by the shoulder and yanked her away. “Don’t waste time. We have to go.”

“But they’re my friends—”

“You can’t take them with you.”

_“But they’re my friends—”_

_“You can’t take them with you!”_

Something ripped Anselm away from her. Edelgard felt a legion of invisible hands wrap around her and drag her backward, pinning her against the iron bars. They dug into her back, pressing painfully against her spine. “Ansy! _Ansy!”_ she cried out, struggling to fight her way free as the mass of bird-faced men pulled Anselm away, pinning him to a metal table and tying down his arms and legs with metal straps. They ripped off his tunic, exposing a blindingly pale torso riddled with scars. His chest heaved, his ribs pressing against his skin so sharply they looked ready to rip themselves free, and he screamed and screamed as the bird-faced men took a long needle and plunged it into his skin right above his heart, just as they had done to him a hundred times before, just as they had done to _her_ a hundred times before.

They dragged Edelgard onto another table, strapped her down, and jabbed their thumbs against the hollow of her throat until her limbs grew too weak and her mind too hazy for her to fight back.

 _“Professor!”_ she choked out. _“Professor! Father! Sothis, please, help me!”_ she begged.

One of the bird-faced men forced her jaw open and thrust a glass vial into her mouth. She bit down on his fingers, nearly severing them, but hot blood mingled with the cold taste of the liquid running down her throat. She choked, sputtered, gasped, writhed against her restraints as the pins-and-needles prickling of short, coarse fur sprouting up from under her skin washed over her like feverish chills. She felt her bones melt, claws rip themselves out of her fingertips, long and sharp teeth push themselves out of her jaws; the jolt of lightning running up and down her spine traveled farther and farther as her growing tail lashed against the surface of the metal table.

The bird-faced men loomed over her like colossal statues, larger and larger with every passing second. Edelgard slipped through her restraints and fell to the floor, half-crawling, struggling to stand upright on legs that were no longer meant to.

The whole world grew around her, the legs of the bird-faced men turning into a towering forest. Only Anselm stayed the same size as her. He writhed on the floor beside her, contorting himself with every pained spasm that wracked his body into more and more painful shapes. Fangs sharp enough to gnaw flesh from bone filled his mouth; black fur sprouted over his bare chest; pink, blood-tinged foam poured from his nose and mouth, obscuring the snout pushing out from his face. His eyes were a pale yellow-gold, like a harvest moon low in the horizon.

One of the bird-faced men removed his mask and sneered down at them. _“Our beloved monsters,”_ Solon chuckled, a grin splitting his corpselike visage. _“Enjoy yourselves…”_

More of the other dark mages removed their masks. Duke Aegir, the prime minister; Marquise Vestra, Count Varley, and the other noblemen who’d betrayed the Emperor; Byleth, her gray eyes wide and empty and lifeless, like a corpse’s; Archbishop Rhea, her beatific gaze and maternal smile particularly perverse. Old and new bloodstains alike marred their faces.

Edelgard stared up at the black rat that loomed over her with hollow golden eyes. Anselm was gone.

Nothing was left of him but _this._

She ran away, terrified. She wanted to go back to her cell. She wanted to be with Pasc and Heddy. She wanted to sleep in a real bed again with Bernie…

She felt a sharp pinch at the base of her tail and the next thing she knew, she was swaying in the air and staring down into the face of Volkhard von Arundel, staring into his cold, cruel lilac eyes.

 _“My dear little El, you’re not going anywhere,”_ he hissed, snakelike. _“Though your heart and soul might be worthless, we still have a use for your perfect body…”_ He opened his mouth wide, unhinging his jaw like a snake, and past the row of teeth was a deep, gaping pink cavern, complete with two long fangs glistening with venom and a thin, forked tongue that flicked in and out.

Edelgard writhed, desperate to free herself from his grip, and sank her sharp teeth into his thumb. With a pained and enraged shout, he loosened his grip on her tail and she tumbled to the floor, landing on polished hardwood.

The dungeons were gone. Instead, what surrounded her—and her, alone—were the desks and chairs of her classroom at Garreg Mach Monastery, complete with the banners of the Adrestian Empire hanging from the walls. Her heart leaped. She was free! She was _free!_

Maybe Bernie was here, too. And Hubert, and the Professor, and the rest of her classmates—she had to see them! She would be safe around them!

As she scurried, elated, across the stone floor of the Black Eagles’ classroom, Edelgard felt a sharp pinch at her waist, and then an eruption of pain so white-hot her brain didn’t register it as pain at first—it was almost _numb_ for a few blissful seconds before hot needles stabbed into every inch of her flesh at once. Her joy abruptly replaced with overwhelming panic, she scratched and clawed at the floor with her paws and tried to pull herself forward, but her legs hung like dead weight. She glanced over her shoulder and saw a heavy steel bar buried in her fur, sinking deep into her flesh, and everything behind the bar—her legs, her tail—lying limp like a corpse. She screamed and tried desperately to pull herself free. This couldn’t be happening. This couldn’t be—

 _“What do we have here?”_ Hubert’s voice rang out above her, a slow, sinister drawl. Edelgard’s heart leaped and she looked up to find him staring down at her— _human_ —towering six feet over her, pristine and perfect. His raven hair fell over his sallow eyes and his lip curled in a sadistic half-smile, deepening the shadows cast by his cheekbones.

 _Hubert, it’s me,_ Edelgard tried to cry out, but only a wordless squeak left her mouth. Her lungs were deflating, their capacity rapidly shrinking as the bar of the mousetrap squeezed tighter. _Hubert, help me!_ she gasped. _It’s me, Edelgard! Edelgard von Hresvelg! Help me, please!_

Squeaks. All that came out were squeaks and squeals, high-pitched even to her ears. She couldn’t talk.

“A pity the trap didn’t snap its neck,” Hubert said, regarding Edelgard with disdain. “What shall I do with it, Lady Edelgard?” he asked, turning his head to his left. Edelgard followed his gaze rightward and upward and found herself staring at herself— _human—_ standing before her, pristine and perfect, resplendent in the Officer’s Academy’s black uniform and gold trim, a luxurious silken half-cape draped over one shoulder. Her face was composed, her lilac eyes cold and merciless, her silken snow-white hair cascading neatly down her back with not even a single strand out of place.

The other Edelgard made a face, her nose wrinkling, rat-like. “Kill it immediately.”

 _No! No, that’s not me!_ Edelgard tried to say, waving her paws, scratching in vain on the floor until her claws tore themselves from her fingertips. _Hubert, please, that’s not me!_ I’m _Edelgard! Your princess, your liege! Help me!_

Hubert looked up at her as if to wordlessly ask, _are you sure?_

The impostor’s eyes flickered and glowed a pale gold like an early harvest moon for a fraction of a second. “You know how I feel about rats, Hubert,” she growled. But it was Anselm’s voice, albeit deeper and rougher and raspier, that emerged from her mouth.

 _I’m not a rat!_ Edelgard squeaked, her voice as wordless to her own ears as it was to Hubert’s. _I’m not a rat, I’m_ Edelgard! _Please, Hubert, no, I’m not a rat, not a rat, not a—_

She felt Hubert’s index finger press against the top of her head, between her ears, almost _gently,_ and for an instant she felt a spring of hope that maybe he’d open the trap and free her.

An instant later, she felt flames spike through her head, liquefying her skull into molten bone, charring her brain to an ashen cinder, and the last thought to spark in that lump of roasting meat before oblivion took her was, _I’m not a rat, I’m not a rat, I’m not a rat, I’m not a rat—_

Edelgard woke up. A soft paw was gently stroking the top of her head, claws softly tickling her scalp. She struggled to breathe and found it mercifully easy to suck down lungfuls of air, to let her chest heave. She wiggled her tail just to make sure it was there and was relieved to find that her hindquarters were still attached to her body.

 _“El, are you okay?”_ a soft, shy voice whispered in her ear.

Bernie!

She was okay! The details of Edelgard’s dream were already fading, but she remembered something horrible happening to her. She was so relieved to hear her voice, and in her relief she wrapped her arms around her waist and held her tight, burying her face in her soft, warm fur. Bernadetta was as soft and cuddly as a stuffed animal. Her own little Bernie-Bear. She needed her.

Bernadetta buried her other paw in Edelgard’s silver mane and scratched the nape of her neck, sending a soothing shiver down her spine to the tip of her tail, which responded by swaying playfully from side to side across the bedding. “You were talking and moaning in your sleep again. Was it a bad dream?”

Edelgard looked up at her, ran her tongue across the roof of her mouth with worry and trepidation, and spoke, afraid that only a dumb, animalistic squeak would emerge.

“Yes,” she said, her voice hoarse. The sound of her own voice was a relief. She felt her pulse slow from its rapid pace to languid rest. “Did I wake you?”

Bernadetta shook her head. “N-No, I was already awake… I’ve been having nightmares, too…”

“About what?”

“The usual. Father yelling at me. I guess now that I’m a mouse, I’ll never find a good husband…”

“Would you like to take a walk together?”

She nodded. “Yeah… that sounds nice.”

Edelgard pulled herself up, her limbs still stiff and aching, and helped Bernadetta out of the crumpled mass of linens that served as their bedding. The two of them left their bedroom and stepped out onto the table.

After retrieving her and the rest of the students from Abyss, Seteth had set up temporary lodgings in the Black Eagles classroom. For now, the mice lived in two dollhouses, one placed on a table that had been set up against the left wall, one placed on a table that had been set up against the right wall. The leftmost dollhouse was the girls’ dormitory (or, as Alois had called it, a _dormice-tory)_ and the rightmost was the boys’. There had been a hue and cry from the students and much protesting, with Hubert arguing most vehemently that the students should have been separated by house, but his little squeaks had fallen on deaf ears. Seteth had said that the last thing the monastery needed was ‘more mice,’ and that he only had the two dollhouses to spare, anyway.

Edelgard stared across the dark room, barely able to make out the outline of the boys’ dormitory in the distance. Hubert was probably worried sick about her. But, she’d assured him, Bernadetta was by her side, and she trusted the other Black Eagles girls as well.

“Is this better?” Bernadetta asked as she and Edelgard sat on the edge of the table with their legs and tails dangling off the side.

“A bit.”

“Was the nightmare that bad?”

Edelgard shook her head. “No, I’ve had worse,” she said, lying. “If your father ever yells at you again, I’ll have Hubert sew his mouth shut.”

Bernadetta laughed. “I don’t think I’ll have to worry about that for a long time. I think he’d keep his mouth shut if you were with me, anyway. Maybe we can visit him when this is over—wouldn’t that be a shock! I think he’d faint if he saw you.”

Edelgard smiled, but it was quickly tempered. “Bernie… would you mind if you could never be human again?”

“Hmm.” Bernadetta looked down at the floor. Edelgard almost envied her for how easily she’d taken to being a mouse. Once the initial shock had worn off, she’d carried on as though she were still herself. She’d faced no existential crisis, grappled with no loss of purpose or direction, felt no terror or creeping sense of wrongness… Come to think of it, Edelgard thought, all of the other ‘temporarily embarrassed humans’ seemed to have dealt with being transformed with far less difficulty than she herself had. She was alone.

“I guess it doesn’t make much of a difference,” Bernadetta said. “But being so small is… inconvenient, I guess. At least it gets my father off my back, though…”

“I wish I shared your lack of ambition,” Edelgard said. The next words she spoke, she had to fight to force them out. “Anselm… the Plague Rat destroyed the antidote.”

“Anselm?”

“That thing, that monster… was my brother. I’d thought I was the only survivor. I hadn’t thought that someone else might have made it out, that someone else would have resented me enough that he would…”

Edelgard looked down at her paws. Ugly pink things covered with a dusting of sparse white fur, facsimiles of human hands. Hands too small to change the world. She curled them into fists, let her claws sink into her palms.

The only thing that had made being a mouse tolerable had been the thought that it wouldn’t be permanent. But after what Anselm had done, she couldn’t fall back on that comforting thought anymore.

A mouse could never be an emperor. A mouse could never lead armies. A mouse could never stand on the boundary of a new world and stride across it. Without the antidote, without a way to regain her humanity, the purpose she had worked toward had been washed away.

And with that, everything else she’d done—all the horrible things that her eventual victory would have washed her hands of—was rendered meaningless as well. Her alliance with the Agarthans, and everything that had entailed, had been meaningless. Surviving the dungeons of Enbarr had been meaningless.

Surviving that hell. That was what had started it all. That was the reason she was stuck like this now. Because she, weak and unworthy, had survived. She had tried to give her life meaning to retroactively justify that cruel twist of fate, but she had only been fooling herself. The Plague Rat— _Anselm_ —had returned from hell, had returned from the dead, to take from her what she had never deserved to have.

Life.

Meaning. Purpose. Value.

Bernadetta gently stroked her fur. “Shh. Shh. I-It’s okay. I’m sorry—I didn’t mean to—to upset you… P-Please stop c—I-I mean, i-it’s not my place to tell you what t-to do, but—please stop crying, El…”

Edelgard hadn’t realized that she’d been crying. The lump in her throat, the hot, wet veil over her eyes, the way her chest and shoulders threatened to heave—she hadn’t noticed them until now.

With that, with the last of her defenses ripped away, with tears dripping down her snout, there was nothing left of her that was truly Edelgard—save only for her memories.

“He’s trapped us like this,” she said. She wiped her eyes on her paws. “He threw aside his own ambitions purely to spite mine.”

“Is that the kind of person Anselm was?”

She shook her head. “Ansy was—” She swallowed another lump in her throat. “He was very… protective of me. It was actually annoying—He was only eight or so months older than me, but because he had a major Crest, he always tried to act like the adult in the room. More so than Burkhart, even.”

“It doesn’t sound like he’d do something like this,” Bernadetta suggested. “Maybe he’s lying…”

“No. He can’t be anyone else.” Edelgard’s mind wandered back to the words Anselm had spat at her the night he’d tried to escape, and like he’d suggested, she’d stayed behind to die with the others.

For the first time in years, the memory came clearly even to her waking mind. The night after, when he’d been dragged out by the guards for the last time, he’d screamed and cursed and spat out all of his mounting hatred. He had hated Arundel. And their helpless father. And the mages in their bird-faced masks, and Prime Minister Aegir and the rest of the nobles. And Edelgard.

Her last memory of him for the longest time had been him screaming at her and calling her a coward.

If anyone wanted vengeance on her, it would be him.

“He won yesterday. We all fought so hard, but… he won.” Edelgard sighed. “And now I feel so… empty. Listless. Like a ship in the ocean without a crew, abandoned, adrift in the endless sea with no land in sight… condemned. There’s nothing to drive me forward, no purpose, no achievable goal, except to be tossed by the waves into oblivion… My life has no meaning now. If it was all leading up to this, then perhaps it never did.”

If she had still believed in the Goddess, she might have believed that she was being punished for plotting to destroy the Church of Seiros and abolish its oppressive religion. For that—and for the terrible deeds she had done toward that end. Though she was an atheist, the thought almost sounded appealing now. Perhaps Anselm had returned as an instrument of Sothis’ divine wrath…

“I should have died,” she said, “in the dungeons, and _he_ should have lived, and now the world is correcting its mistake.”

Bernadetta was silent as she took Edelgard in her arms, gently but firmly, and nestled her snout in the crook of her neck. She didn’t speak for a while, just held onto her and offered her warmth and a heavy, comforting weight on her shoulder.

“I bet Hubert’s glad you didn’t, though,” she finally said to Edelgard. “And without you, Ferdinand wouldn’t have anyone to compete with. And the Professor is glad you exist… uh… a-and me! You can’t be a mistake! Where would I be without you? You… you taught me how to be strong…” She nuzzled her neck, softly, letting her whiskers brush against her fur and tickle her skin. “And if I—if I can give some of that strength back to you…”

“Don’t say such foolish things.”

“And even if your life doesn’t have meaning, that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth anything! You can still draw… or paint… or write stories… or sew little dolls of carnivorous plants…”

Edelgard felt a hollow open up in her heart. “Can I do those things?”

Bernadetta nodded. “Sure. Even if we’re mice, if we make a small enough paintbrush…”

“I have… dabbled in portraits from time to time.”

“I bet they’re great.”

“No, they’re truly terrible.”

“But you can do them. And you can spend time with people who care about you… maybe… if you want to… unless you don’t, of course…”

“But can I be _happy_ doing those things? Like you are? Can I be… satisfied, knowing the life I could have had?” Edelgard took a deep breath, her lungs pressing almost painfully, paradoxically, against the empty space that had seized her chest. “Can I live the life of Bernadetta von Varley, knowing I was once Edelgard von Hresvelg?”

Bernadetta pulled away and looked down glumly at the floor. “I… I guess I don’t know.”

“I think I would have to forget.” Edelgard shook her head. “It’s nice to dream that I could live like you, Bernie, but… thoughts of the path I could have walked would consume me.”

“Then… I hope we find another way to be human again,” Bernadetta said. “You’d never be happy living my life, and… I want you to be happy, El. Living your own life. Making your own path.”

Edelgard pulled her cloak tighter around her shoulders. It was still filthy—though one of the still-human students had stopped by in the afternoon offering to do laundry for the girls’ dormitory, Edelgard had refused to give up her cloak despite the dirt and blood and ash staining it because she’d feared that any attempt at washing it would have scrubbed out what few remnants of her human scent still clung to it.

“I want to be happy, too,” she said.

“Don’t give up,” Bernadetta said. “That’s… what I like about you—that you don’t give up! You make me want to not give up, too, even if all I really want is to stay in my room and work on my embroidery. You make me want to try to be better, so…” She trailed off. “So don’t lose hope.”

“Thank you, Bernie.” Edelgard stood up. “Do you want to go back to bed?”

Bernadetta nodded. “If you feel better.”

“I do,” she said. “I wish you could have your own bed,” she added, looking over at the dollhouse which had half as many rooms as it had mice. “I suppose you must be getting sick of being around me—ever since this whole incident started, you’ve had hardly a moment to yourself, have you?”

“I haven’t,” Bernadetta admitted, standing up beside her. “Except for the time I ran away and you had to come rescue me…”

“I was so worried,” Edelgard sighed. “You were all I had down there, and I felt terrible for scaring you away.”

“But… actually, I don’t think I mind being with you,” she said, smiling faintly. “Not that I like not being alone! A-As long as we’re both alone together! I still don’t like, um, b-being around too many people—”

“I see,” Edelgard said, a little heartened. Heartened enough that she could almost return Bernadetta’s faint, weak little smile. “So you want to have me all to yourself?”

Bernadetta let out a nervous laugh. “I-I mean, um… wh-when you put it like that…”

Edelgard cupped her paw under Bernadetta’s chin and gently tilted her head up. “I think I want you all to myself, too.”

She closed her eyes, leaned in, let the tip of her nose press gently against Bernadetta’s, felt the tips of their whiskers intermingle and the warm breath from her mouth. Something warm took root in the aching emptiness of her heart for as long as the two of them stayed connected, and in that moment, Edelgard could almost forget herself, and she could be blissful in her ignorance.

* * *

Claude couldn’t sleep.

He’d thought he’d sleep like the world’s laziest cat after everything that had happened today—that grueling battle to crush the Agarthan stronghold, the commotion that had seized the whole academy upon his return from Abyss, having to deal with all of the still-human half of his class staring down at him with bemusement (or in Lorenz’s case, _a_ musement) while Seteth set up their ‘dormitories,’ and the obligatory post-victory ‘feast’ he had insisted the Alliance of Four Mouses throw for themselves in the hopes of lifting their spirits—but here he was, wide awake.

He shifted uncomfortably in his makeshift bed, laid on his side, his stomach, and his back, kept his eyes closed for as long as he could—and yet, nothing.

Part of it was that being a mouse was starting to lose his luster. He’d kept his spirits up at first, regarded it as a novelty, made the best of it by mentally cataloging what it was like to experience the world with an animal’s eyes and nose and ears and whiskers, but seeing the chances for him to regain his humanity dwindle before his eyes did a lot to spoil that.

A mouse couldn’t inherit the Riegan dukedom, after all. A mouse couldn’t break down the borders that divided the world, internally and externally. A mouse couldn’t make peace between Fódlan and Almyra. A mouse couldn’t do, really, _anything_ he wanted to do. Sure, mice could be petted and scratched behind the ears and that felt _really_ good, but he couldn’t just resign himself to a life of hedonism. Mice were tiny and impotent in the world of humans, and those Agarthans seemed to be intent on making sure he and the rest of his friends _stayed_ that way.

At least Lorenz was probably stoked that House Gloucester now stood as the most likely noble family to take control of the Leicester Alliance, now that House Riegan no longer had a human heir.

No, he told himself, there had to be a way to make it work. There had to be some method to reversing the transformation that the Church of Seiros, with all its resources, could find. And if there wasn’t, then perhaps, Claude thought, he could perch on Lorenz’s head and control him like a puppet by selectively tugging on strands of hair.

He laid awake, cocooned in his linen blankets to ward off the cold, as his thoughts turned toward the most ludicrous schemes he’d ever schemed. How could a mouse take charge of the Alliance? Through a body double, perhaps, whose ear he could whisper in… or maybe he could learn whatever ‘trick’ the Plague Rat had been planning on using to take Edelgard’s body and find himself a suitable host.

He shuddered. Way too ruthless, even for him. He was a by-any-means-necessary guy, sure, but he kept all the nastiest plans as plans C through Z and hoped he only ever had to choose between A and B.

He wondered if Edelgard was the same.

As though his thoughts weren’t trouble enough, the walls of the dollhouse were paper-thin (and all of the rooms only had three of them, too boot) and Dedue snored. Claude hadn’t known that mice could snore. He halfheartedly filed that away in the little compartment of his brain that held all the interesting mouse facts he’d picked up upon being turned into a mouse.

No, Dedue snoring wasn’t the only sound keeping him awake, though. There was a troubled voice drifting through the air, faint but unmistakable.

_“Father, please… There is nothing more I can do! Must you still visit me?”_

Claude crawled out of bed. “Dimitri?”

He found Dimitri standing at the edge of the table, staring out into the darkness with his head bowed, his tattered cloak hanging from slumped and weary shoulders, as he argued with a voice only he could hear.

 _“Father, Mother…”_ Dimitri clutched his cloak tightly to his shoulders, shivering. _“I know I have failed you. I cannot seek to avenge you like_ this! _What is the use of haunting me further?”_

Claude crept closer, curious. Was this what Dimitri had meant about the voices of the dead? Had he really been speaking _literally?_

 _“Glenn…”_ Dimitri shook his head. _“Glenn, please, I beg of you not to look at me like that. You look too much like your brother…”_

“Hey, Dimitri.” Claude reached out to grab him by the shoulder. Dimitri whirled around, shock and panic contorting his face, and shoved him away—then slipped, his grip on the edge of the table failing, falling precariously backward as he lost his balance—

Claude grabbed him by the arm and wrenched him backward, pulling him away before he could fall to the floor, and the two of them fell in a heap onto the surface of the table.

“What are you doing here, Claude?” Dimitri asked, almost accusatory.

“I couldn’t sleep,” Claude said, “and you looked like you could use a much better conversation partner.”

Dimitri scratched at the much-cleaner bandage wrapped over his eye. Professor Manuela had done what she could for it, but had said it would need a few days more to heal naturally. “This isn’t a conversation you can have any part in, I’m afraid. Go back to sleep.”

“Then why don’t we have a different conversation?”

He stood up, turned his back on Claude, and went back to brooding at the edge of the table. “No.”

Claude inched closer to him, more carefully and cautiously this time in case Dimitri threw the both of them off the table and onto the floor. “So when you said your dream was revenge… that’s not something _you_ want, just something your dead parents keep screaming at you for?”

“I owe it to them to avenge them. For Father, Mother, Glenn, and all those faceless masses who died in Duscur. For the El I knew.” Dimitri shook his head. “Someone like you cannot understand.”

“I _understand_ that you’re freaking out right now because we _might_ be stuck like this forever, and it’s hard to comb the whole kingdom for your parents’ killers when you’re three inches tall. Look, all of us right now who had any sort of plans for the future are struggling with the same thing,” Claude said. “We all feel your pain.”

“No, you don’t. You can’t even _imagine._ My dream isn’t anything like yours. Revenge is something attainable. You find the dastard responsible and kill them. But _your_ dream was a pie-in-the-sky fantasy all along, _Khalid,”_ Dimitri spat, turning to face him. “You can’t make the whole world hold hands and sing in perfect harmony. Your dream was no less attainable last week as it is now, and you were fooling yourself if you thought otherwise!”

Claude swallowed his dismay and his wounded pride. It stung to hear someone he’d confided in speaking his name with such venom. Hence why he usually never confided in people. The one time he’d let down his guard… “Well, I’m not gonna give up on it, even if I’m stuck this way forever.”

Dimitri sighed. “I am… sorry. I did not mean that. If you are still this willing to devote yourself to your goals, then I suppose I shouldn’t give up so easily, either.”

“Sounds to me like your heart’s not in it, anyway. Anything else you’ve thought of devoting your life to?”

“It doesn’t matter if my heart’s not in it. I owe them justice.”

“They’re that pushy, huh?”

“Like you wouldn’t believe. Since we met Cornelia and learned what… _Edelgard…_ has been doing, they’ve been screaming.”

From the venom that dripped from Dimitri’s voice when he spoke his stepsister’s name, Claude figured that he should avoid using the E-word around him. “I’ll have to take your word for it; I’ve never been haunted.”

Dimitri glanced to his left and right, his ears flicking in concert with his roving eye as though responding to multiple unheard voices. His mouth opened as though he were about to say something, but then he just closed it and shook his head.

Claude wondered where he’d seen that behavior before—it struck him as familiar. Come to think of it, when Byleth had been leading the Alliance through Mousehaven, she’d exhibited much of the same body language—responding, perhaps, to a voice or presence only she could hear. Was there a ghost haunting her, as well?

“Count yourself fortunate, then,” Dimitri said. The faintest hint of a smile, bitter and mirthless, graced his face.

“What are they saying to you now?” Claude smirked. “I bet your father’s going on like ‘I raised my son to be a man, not a mouse,’ or something like that.”

“Well, he says it more venomously, but…” Dimitri’s smile wobbled, as though it was trying to grow but had to fight against the rest of his face. “You… do not exactly sound unlike him.”

“I’ve got a gift for imitating people. I can do you, too, if you’d like.”

Dimitri’s eyebrows rose. “You think you can?”

“Yeah. Here’s what you sound like.” Claude cleared his throat. “Ahem. ‘Claude, your plans are absolutely ridiculous; I cannot believe they work one hundred percent of the time.’”

Dimitri chuckled. “That’s actually pretty good. Although I would never—”

“‘The only thing I admire about you more than your brilliant tactical mind is your gorgeous hair and devil-may-care smile,’” Claude went on, still nailing Dimitri’s voice.

He imagined from the way Dimitri acted that he was blushing all the way up to the tips of his ears. “C-C-Claude, th-that’s—” the prince spluttered. “E-E… Eerily accurate.”

“You admire my gorgeous hair and devil-may-care smile? For what it’s worth, you’re not too bad looking yourself.”

“What? N—u-uh, I-I was only talking about your imitation.”

“It’s a handy skill. I’m not half as good at it as that Yuri guy was, but I try.”

Dimitri cleared his throat and attempted to regain what little composure he’d had at first.

“So… those ghosts still troubling you?” Claude asked. “Or have my lovable antics scared them off?”

He raised a paw to his forehead. His ears were still twitching a bit, which Claude took as a bad sign. “Still loud and clear, I fear… though having someone to talk to helps.” He let out a heavy, weary sigh. “It’s wrong of me to ignore them, but…”

“Nonsense. Your ghosts sound pretty entitled, if you ask me. Family or not, if they’ve been screaming at you all day, you need a break.” Claude scratched his whiskers. “There’s one other thing I can try to help you.”

“What, an exorcism?”

“Not exactly. When I need to take my mind off troubling matters, I go through the old Almyran bedtime stories my father used to tell me.”

Dimitri furrowed his brow and wrinkled his nose skeptically. “Bedtime stories?”

“They’re nice stories,” Claude said, offering him a hopeful smile.

Dimitri sighed. “Okay.”

With that, Claude sat down and patted the surface of the table next to him. “Alright, take a seat.”

Once Dimitri had settled down, Claude cleared his throat and began. “Once upon a time, there was a white camel that got separated from his herd…”

As the story went on, the prince’s turbulent nature grew calmer and more sedate until his demeanor was so placid that he didn’t so much as flinch when Claude started combing his fur. In fact, Dimitri all but leaned into his touch, his breath slowing and steadying, his eye slowly falling shut as he nodded off.

“…And so the white camel finally found his herd, and they remained together for a long, long time until he set out to start a herd of his own. But that is a story for another time.” Claude scratched behind Dimitri’s ear and found himself delighted by the way it lazily twitched in response to his touch. “Funny thing is, though, my father never told me the other story, so you’ll have to imagine what happened next. So, how’d you like it?”

Dimitri mumbled incoherently, his head resting weightily on Claude’s shoulder. A thin line of drool dripped from the side of his mouth, demonstrating quite clearly that he was very much asleep. For all his tempestuous moods, he was still surprisingly cute. Claude couldn’t help but wonder if he’d be this adorable in this situation if they were both human. If— _when_ an alternative cure for the whole mouse… issue was found, maybe he could repeat this experiment.

“Yeah, I thought you’d like it. See, what did I tell you? Works like—” Claude stifled a yawn. Even he was starting to feel a little leaden. “Works like a charm every time…” He very carefully disentangled himself from the prince, letting him very slowly and gently sink to the table and rose to his feet. “Now how am I gonna carry you back to your bed…”

The sound of footsteps padding across the table reached his ears and he forgot his weariness, whirling around to find Dedue looming over him. Dedue was quite an excellent loomer. He loomed like a pro. No one loomed more than him, except for maybe Hubert on a particularly bad day. Only Raphael came close to matching him for height, and Raphael was a big ball of musclebound sunshine.

“Oh, hi, Dedue,” Claude said. “How are you de-doing tonight?”

Dedue stared down at him with the exact opposite of amusement. “I am fine,” he answered. He looked down at Dimitri, who was curled up and sleeping like a log, and let out the barest hint of a relieved sight. “I see His Highness is with you. When I awoke and he was not by my side, I feared he was doing something rash. Again.”

“I think he was about to before I showed up. But he shouldn’t be a problem now.”

Dedue looked almost concerned. “What did you do?” he asked, sounding frighteningly accusatory.

“Old bedtime story from Almyra,” Claude said. “Put him out like a light.”

“I see.” Dedue knelt down, picked Dimitri up, and slung him over his shoulder like a sack of flour. “I had never thought of that. I should try telling him children’s stories from Duscur the next time he is troubled.”

“I’m glad I could help,” Claude said, watching Dedue walk back to the dollhouse with Dimitri in tow. He stifled another yawn. Maybe he’d sleep well tonight, too.

* * *

Edelgard had no more unpleasant dreams that night. Indeed, waking up in the old dollhouse to find herself and Bernadetta wrapped tightly together in the same blanket and bathed in the amber morning sunlight streaming in through the familiar windows of the Black Eagles classroom, she found herself feeling almost well-rested and surprisingly calm.

Yesterday—and last night—had been a low point, between the fatigue of combat and the shock of her once-dead brother’s petty act of revenge, but now the calm she felt was less resignation to oblivion and more like the calm she felt when heading into battle.

She wouldn’t give into irrational fears. Surely somewhere out there was the cure for this condition, and with Rhea herself turned, the entire Church of Seiros would be expending every effort to find it. That was doubtless what Hubert was telling himself, and what he would be telling her as well if he were here.

She didn’t leave her makeshift little bed. She didn’t see any reason why she should—for now, she was neither a princess nor a student, and had none of the attendant responsibilities of either. There was no reason for her to get up, no matter how wide awake she was.

So instead, she sat at Bernadetta’s side, half-buried in the blankets, and took to gently scratching her chin. Bernadetta’s whiskers twitched.

It was a good morning. It had to be. Things could only go uphill from yesterday. She had to hold onto hope. She had to. She _had_ to—

The hollowness bit into her chest again.

She busied herself by petting Bernadetta until the ache had subsided, then took a walk to help clear her head. From the looks of it, none of the other girls had awakened—they were all still nestled in their own beds, all two to a room. She looked across the room to the boys’ dormitory in the distance and saw no sign of activity there, either.

She walked to the edge of the table and deliberated the possibility of climbing down to the floor, scurrying over to the other side of the room, climbing up to the other table, and sneaking into the boys’ dormitory to speak with Hubert. Between whatever he would say to her and what Bernadetta had said to her last night, her irrational melancholy would be as good as gone.

Her left and right wings. She found herself mustering a weak smile. Perhaps this mouse could still fly.

The door to the Black Eagles classroom swung open with a loud creak and Edelgard, suddenly fearing that an agent of the Agarthans might be coming to finish her off, scurried back to her room and buried herself entirely under her blankets. Her pulse raced. Her chest heaved. Darkness engulfed her as she heard—and felt—heavy footfalls come closer, closer…

 _“Hello?”_ Captain Jeralt’s voice rang out. _“Anyone awake? Rise and shine!”_

Jeralt. Byleth’s father. A trustworthy man, from what little Edelgard knew of him. She’d overheard him once warning Byleth not to trust Archbishop Rhea, and anybody who didn’t trust that monster was alright in her book.

Edelgard wormed her way back out of the covers. “Ah, Captain Jeralt. You, er, startled me…”

Jeralt had his back to her. In fact, he was already in rapt conversation with someone over at the boys’ dormitory, although his conversation partner’s mousy voice didn’t quite carry all the way across the room.

 _“Oh, hi there, Claude. Sorry. Didn’t hear you there. No, I’m afraid the other knights haven’t covered much ground in Abyss yet.”_ Jeralt lifted a bandaged hand. _“I’ll say, they’ve got some nasty traps that survived the fire. Oh, don’t worry, I’m fine. It’ll take more than a couple pint-sized cannons to put_ me _down. No, actually, the other knights will be carrying out the search today. Seteth’s roped me into helping him address some of your… more short-term needs. I’m a little rusty when it comes to woodcarving, but I’m sure that between me, him, and Gilbert, we’ll have proper little houses for all of you in a few days if we work hard.”_ Sheepishly, he scratched at his head, burying calloused fingers in his rusty hair. _“Abyss is a big place. Might be a while before we’ve searched every inch of it. If there’s any spare antidote there, it might take a month or more to find. Trust me, rough sleeping gets old after a while. You’ll be glad to have_ real _bedrooms with four walls and proper beds again.”_

A month or more. Edelgard knew she had to manage her expectations, but hearing that disheartened her. A month or more—if there even _was_ a spare antidote. She doubted it.

 _“Same timetable for sourcing other ways to change you back,”_ Jeralt went on. _“Rhea’s sending couriers on our fastest wyverns to all four corners of Fódlan. Manuela and Hanneman are poring through the library and sending for more advanced magical books from every sorcery academy between Enbarr and Derdriu. I hear Seteth’s even letting them peek at his library of banned materials—oh, look at you, so excited,”_ he said, chuckling.

An effort was being made, but would it be all for naught? Edelgard wondered if she could hold out hope for more than a month or two—if _anyone_ could. How many months would it take before everyone was resigned to their fate—before everyone realized that any dreams they’d had were well and truly dead?

A disturbing thought occurred to her. Mice didn’t live long, did they? Two years, three years at most. Matthias had been only eleven or so months old and he’d been an adult, albeit a dangerously naive one. That meant that to a mouse, a single month was the equivalent of…

She did some mental math. If the average human lived between seventy and eighty years or so, and the average mouse lived between two or three, then a single month would age her mouse body the equivalent of _years._ That meant there was a real danger she and all the other mice could all grow old or even _die_ while waiting for a cure.

It was even more pressing a concern for herself and Lysithea—while she could only assume in Lysithea’s case, Edelgard knew from her own experience that the Crest experiments she’d undergone had dramatically shortened her lifespan. She didn’t expect to live past thirty—so, in mouse years, she and Lysithea probably only had four or five months left, if not less, while everyone else might last twelve or eighteen.

At least it would be a fitting end for the Immaculate One, who’d spent a thousand years treating the human race like so many pet mice.

 _“Anyway, Seteth sent me along to push your tables together,”_ Jeralt said to Claude. _“Lady Rhea’s got a special announcement to make to all of you—he’ll be bringing her and Byleth along any minute now.”_

Edelgard’s blood ran cold. Rhea was coming _here?_ This morning? To make a _special announcement?_

 _“Anyway,”_ Jeralt said, taking the end of the boys’ table in his hands and noisily dragging it to the center of the room, _“if none of the boys are awake yet, this’ll get ‘em up.”_

True to his words, the dollhouse came alive with irate, albeit groggy, mice. Jeralt moved to the girls’ table next. His eyes lit up when he saw Edelgard. “Oh, hello there, Your Highness.”

He was only being deferential, but hearing someone who towered over her calling her _her highness_ felt needlessly and cruelly ironic.

Edelgard nodded curtly. “Captain Jeralt. Good morning.”

“Good morning to you, too. How’d you sleep?”

“Halfway decent.”

“You’ve been on my little girl’s mind, you know,” he said. “She was really relieved that you were still in one piece.”

“I was as relieved to see her,” Edelgard admitted, “although… I am sorry she was caught up in this.”

“Well, it’s her job to look after you kids, so she didn’t have much of a choice,” Jeralt said, crouching down and taking the end of the table in his hands. “And, well, I said I’d be disappointed if she got herself turned into a mouse, but honestly… it’s a brave thing she did. You’ve really changed her—before she started teaching your class, I don’t think she really cared about anything except fighting and fishing. She was so… closed off. In twenty years, I’ve never seen her smile, but I catch her doing it around your class and it’s…” He closed his eyes and smiled wistfully. “I really appreciate it.”

Edelgard smiled bashfully. “Oh, that’s… Thank you, Captain.”

“Now, are you sure you’re feeling alright? You were just about catatonic all day yesterday.”

“I have a lot on my mind.”

“I’m sure you do. Must be stressful, being a mouse.”

“You have no idea.”

Jeralt’s eyes brightened, as though he’d just had an idea. He took out a thimble from his satchel, set it on the table, and produced a worn flask not unlike the one Hubert carried. “Here’s something to take the edge off,” he said, uncorking the flask and tipping it ever so slightly to let a few droplets of clear liquid that was most definitely _not_ water drip into the thimble.

Edelgard took the thimble in her paws and looked down at it. What struck her first was the smell. Sharp, heady, vaguely floral, it was a scent that seemed to turn to stinging fumes in her nostrils in an oddly pleasant way. She’d had wine when dining with nobles and dignitaries from the Empire, but this… was not wine. She’d never had spirits before, although Hubert had once or twice offered her some of his after particularly unpleasant interactions with her Agarthan former allies.

“It’s gin,” he told her. “Now, I’m not sure how much it takes to get a mouse drunk, so… take it easy. But take it.”

Edelgard lifted the thimble, tilted it on its side, and lapped up some of it. It stung her tongue and her throat. Her eyes watered. She coughed. She could feel an almost numbing cloud of fumes fill her mouth and a lingering, fuzzy feeling in her throat. But there was an odd sort of foggy warmth to it, though.

“Bit of an acquired taste,” Jeralt said, taking back the thimble from her when she was finished and pocketing it and the flask. “Now, I’m sure you’ve overheard me talking to Claude, but I’m gonna have to move your table, so sit tight.”

Since the ungodly noise of the other table moving hadn’t woken anyone else yet, it was up to the rattling of the old dollhouse to jolt the rest of the girls out of their slumber as Jeralt pushed their table together with the boys’ table.

“What’s going on?” Bernadetta blearily mumbled, rushing to Edelgard’s side.

“It’s nothing,” she told her. “Just Archbishop Rhea coming by to make a special announcement.”

Hubert didn’t wait until the tables were fully joined to leap over to the girls’ table, though he tried very hard not to pay much attention to the several-foot drop from the tabletops to the floor below. “Lady Edelgard, I trust you slept well?” he asked urgently.

“A little fitfully at first, but I got a good night’s rest,” she assured him.

Jeralt repeated to the rest of the mice what he’d told Claude, promised them that Mercedes would be coming with breakfast for them soon afterward, warned them that Ignatz was probably going to stop by again and ask if he could paint a still-life of them, and turned around to leave the exact instant that Seteth walked through the door with two mice standing on his upraised hands.

As Seteth set Rhea and Byleth down on the table, the students all clustered together in front of them, loosely segregated by house. Edelgard looked to Hubert. Even he looked worried. She glanced at Dimitri, who met her eyes just briefly enough to scowl at her and look away.

“My children,” Rhea said, her head slowly turning as her gaze passed over the crowd, “it does my heart good to see you healthy and well-rested after all you have suffered. Truly the Goddess has smiled on you all.”

Edelgard fought the urge to look away when Rhea’s eyes met hers. What did she know? What had Byleth told her? She hadn’t had much of an opportunity to speak with her professor yesterday—Rhea had called her away almost immediately, and besides, Edelgard herself had sleepwalked through that entire day after what Anselm had done. She should have guessed that Rhea would have been exhaustively debriefing her—and Byleth knew too much now. About Edelgard’s captivity and her Crest of Flames, Edelgard had told her of her own free will—but her unholy alliance with the Agarthans had been coerced out of her. She never should have let Byleth know. She never should have trusted her with anything.

“As some of you might have guessed, those responsible for… _mousing_ us have made procuring a cure as difficult as possible,” Rhea said. “Rest assured we are working hard to restore you to your human forms as soon as possible, but that this is a process that may take weeks—or months.”

A susurrus of dismayed whispers rustled through the student body.

“In the meantime, we will do everything we can to see to it that you are all comfortable and well taken care of, and above all, _safe.”_

Lysithea raised her paw. “Er… excuse me, Lady Rhea. I have a question.”

“Yes, my child?”

“If we are… mice… for the next few months, how will we graduate on time? Won’t this throw off the schedule of our term?”

Rhea nodded. “An excellent question, my child. I am glad to see you so proactively interested in your education. I have been discussing modifications to your curriculum to ensure that, mice or not, you will all graduate from the Officer’s Academy by the end of the Lone Moon. For starters, you shall all be treated as a single class, and Professor Byleth will be administering your redesigned curriculum to you with assistance from Sir Alois and Lady Catherine. Assuming, Professor,” she said, turning to Byleth, “you feel you can handle the expanded class size?”

Byleth solemnly nodded.

Edelgard scanned the crowd again. She could see stars in Caspar’s eyes, but she still felt uneasy about this development. What was Rhea planning?

Rhea looked to the rest of the students. “I know that many of you must feel doubtful and fearful. Some of you may be worried about your family’s well-being, or the status of your inheritances, or the possibility that those responsible for this state of affairs may return to cause you further harm. But you are all under the protection of the Church of Seiros, and you shall not come to harm again. We will take care of everything.”

Was this it? Was that all Rhea had to announce? Edelgard tried to search Byleth’s eyes for any sort of sign of trouble, but the uncertainty and shame she felt made it nigh-impossible to look her in the eyes. She didn’t know if she could trust Byleth. She wasn’t sure if she ever _should_ have—When had Rhea gotten to her? Last night? Or before even that? How could she have been so foolish?

She became aware of a slight tremor in her paws and clasped them to her chest to try and quell it. She couldn’t look weak in front of Rhea. Not in front of her enemy.

“May the Goddess Sothis watch over you and protect you,” Rhea said. Then she looked right at Edelgard. “Now, my dear Edelgard, if you would so kindly step forth…”

Edelgard found herself rooted to the spot. She didn’t realize until she started feeling lightheaded how shallowly she was breathing. She looked over at Hubert. His clenched paws were shaking.

“Edelgard, please. You have nothing to fear from me.”

Nothing to fear? She had _everything_ to fear. She had seen what Rhea had done to those who’d gone against the Church of Seiros—firsthand. Rhea made the students of the Officer’s Academy go out and ‘clean out’ pockets of dissidents as a show of force and a warning to all those who might defy the church. Edelgard still remembered seeing the bishops of the Western Church die by Rhea’s own knights, defenseless and unarmed, pleading for the slightest hint of her mercy.

And it was because of Rhea that Fódlan’s savage, oppressive system of nobility existed, a system built on a lie of ‘blessings’ from a nonexistent goddess that reduced people to tools, weapons, brood mares, and stud bulls—and those were the _lucky_ ones compared to the commoners who scrabbled for scraps of bread and lived or died at the whims of their ‘betters.’ The war Edelgard had planned on fighting, however bloody it would be and however many innocents would perish in it, could never hope to match a reign of terror that had lasted one thousand years and condemned more lives to misery without recourse in that time period than there were stars in the sky.

Rhea was the enemy of the world—and had to be overthrown by any means necessary.

“Edelgard,” Rhea said, more sharply this time, as though she was growing frustrated. She stepped forward and held her arms out at her sides as a show that she was no threat. Edelgard didn’t believe it for a second. She knew that the mint-green mouse standing before her was hiding an unimaginable power. She’d seen it in action yesterday morning, burning the very air. “Please.”

Edelgard took as deep a breath as she could manage. Her pulse fluttered. Hubert kept glancing at her, struggling to hide his concern from Rhea. Visions of her own execution danced in front of her head. To be murdered by this tyrant who lurked behind a maternal guise and the ‘love’ of a nonexistent deity in full view of her classmates, her professor, Hubert, Bernie…

Bernadetta gently patted her on the back. _What’s wrong, El?_ she mouthed.

Edelgard looked to her professor. Byleth caught her glance, and in the rhythmic code she’d taught all her students, blinked _it’s okay._ She couldn’t tell if it was meant to be reassuring or ominous.

Swallowing a lump in her throat and trying hard not to shiver, Edelgard took a step forward. Hubert joined her.

“Ah.” Rhea held up one paw. “Hubert, I understand that you do not wish to leave Edelgard alone. I assure you,” she told him, a cold and reptilian smile on her face, “she will not come to harm around me.”

Hubert reluctantly stepped back. This was a battle he couldn’t win.

Edelgard took another step toward Rhea. If she was to die here, then at least the rest of the students would see Rhea for the blood-soaked demon she truly was. Perhaps some of them would be galvanized to fight her, to champion the cause of the late Edelgard von Hresvelg.

Rhea rested her paws on her shoulders. Edelgard tensed up and tried not to show her fear. As fragile as she was right now, she wouldn’t die cowering. Not in front of—

Her heart stopped.

Rhea was _hugging_ her now, combing her hair with one paw while the other rested gently on her back, laying her cheek on her shoulder and cooing softly in her ear, _“Oh, my dear child, Edelgard… how my spirits lift, seeing you alive and well…”_

Edelgard couldn’t think of anything to say. Her pulse went back to racing. This was the _last_ thing she had expected.

Rhea pulled away from her, still keeping one paw buried in Edelgard’s mane, as though to demonstrate her hold over her, and gently rubbed her thumb along the soft, thin skin of her ear. Edelgard felt like a pet on the end of a leash. She tried to glance over her shoulder at Hubert and Bernadetta, but Rhea countered the turn of her head with a gentle, yet firm tug and kept her in place, _forcing_ her to look at her.

Even as a mouse, Rhea was _terrifying._

“My child, please walk with me,” she said to Edelgard. “I wish to speak to you in private.”

“I… I, er…” Edelgard rasped, her mouth dry, “would… prefer to remain with my classmates. They struggled so hard to find me, after all. I do not wish to leave them. Surely whatever you have to say to me can be said in their presence.”

Rhea smiled. “I understand. We shall not go far, though; just a walk around this room.” She looked to Seteth. “Seteth, if you could lower us to the floor?”

Before Edelgard could protest, Rhea herded her onto Seteth’s waiting hand, and the two of them were slowly and gently lowered to the floor.

Edelgard recalled her dream and shivered.

“Are you cold, dear?” Rhea asked, concerned. She plucked at her cloak, frowning with distaste. “Your clothes are…”

Defensive, Edelgard snatched her cloak away and wrapped it tightly over her shoulders like a shawl. Rhea was not one to talk, considering she was currently wearing what looked like a gown inexpertly sewn together out of a ragged scrap of drapery.

“Your professor told me where you and your classmates picked up your adorable tiny clothes,” Rhea said. Her expression softened. “And this cape… it is the scrap that was missing from your uniform, is it not? It must bring you comfort.”

“Is this what you wished to speak to me in private about?” Edelgard asked her, almost dazed by this bizarre turn. Was Rhea trying to get her to let her guard down?

Rhea shook her head. “No, I am afraid not. Walk with me.” She took a few steps away from Seteth’s shoes, then looked over her shoulder and realized that Edelgard wasn’t following. “Come along. I do not bite.”

Edelgard took a few hesitant steps, matching Rhea’s pace but remaining safely behind her.

“You hold a minor Crest of Seiros, is that right?” Rhea asked her.

Edelgard nodded.

“Do you know why the Hresvelg line bears that crest? Saint Seiros herself granted it to Wilhelm von Hresvelg I and his bloodline as recognition for his services in the war against Nemesis. He became the first emperor of Adrestia and the rock upon which Seiros built her church. Your family’s stewardship of the Goddess’ teachings have been the bedrock of Fódlan’s morality and piety for one hundred generations.”

Edelgard held her tongue, worried that if she forced herself to say something, she would spit out something venomous by accident.

“This may shock you, but I, too, possess the Crest of Seiros, as I am a direct descendant of Saint Seiros herself. Seiros’ blood flows through both of our veins; our shared lineage springs from the same mighty river. In that sense, I consider ourselves to be family.” There was an almost melancholic tone to Rhea’s voice and a wistful tinge to her faint smile.

 _Family?_ Edelgard was taken aback. Was Rhea being metaphorical, or was she implying that Wilhelm and Seiros had _mated?_ That they had _bred?_ That she herself was a descendant of the cruel tyrant that stood before her? She had to be joking—lying to get under her skin. And it was working.

“Are you feeling well, Edelgard?” Rhea asked, furrowing her brow in concern. “You look as though you have seen a ghost.”

“I-I am fine,” Edelgard insisted, picking her jaw off the floor. “It is just that… for an instant, I thought you had insinuated that… er… Wilhelm II was the offspring of Wilhelm I and Saint Seiros herself.”

Rhea let out a mirthful bark of laughter. “Oh, what an imagination you have! I’m afraid the true nature of the relationship between Seiros and Wilhelm has been lost to history. We only know that they were very close friends until their dying days. _Some_ have chosen to interpret them as lovers.”

Edelgard felt something very ugly crawling around inside her and suddenly considering bolting on all fours to the door as fast as her mousy little legs could carry her. Rhea was toying with her like a cat playing with its food. Why? What was it all building toward? What did Rhea plan on doing with her? Why was she acting so… unusual? So off-kilter? What game was she playing?

“Personally, I do not subscribe to that theory,” Rhea said to her. Edelgard couldn’t tell if she was lying. Of course, since she was Seiros herself, she _knew,_ but that was no guarantee she was telling the truth.

Taking a deep breath, Edelgard quelled her mounting disgust. “Neither do I.”

“Nevertheless,” Rhea continued, “I _do_ consider you family, albeit not literally. And so, of course, when you disappeared and were feared dead… I must admit, I was _very_ afraid for you.”

“I am sorry you felt that way.”

“Of course, it stands to reason that _they_ would seek the destruction of your family line,” she said, spitting out _they_ with a venom Edelgard knew all too well. At least she and Seiros could agree on one thing—they both hated the Agarthans. “Those wretched monsters… our former professor Jeritza von Hrym and the man we knew as Brother Tomas should beg the Goddess for swift deaths. When I find out how they managed to slither here under our very noses and defile this sacred place, none of those who aided and abetted them will escape her divine wrath.” She clenched her paws.

Edelgard tried very hard not to swallow the growing lump in her throat. Was she still shivering? Would Rhea notice? She had to keep herself together—she was made of sterner stuff than this!

“But…” Rhea said, sighing, “that will have to wait until we have been… cured of our condition. I am sorry that you and your classmates had to fight against such great evil at your ages. I know it must be traumatic for you to speak about it, but I would just like you to confirm some details for me. Your professor has told me everything she knows about the past week’s events and your role in them. I would like _you_ to tell me what happened, from your perspective, so I may better understand what has transpired.”

And there were the jaws of the trap closing shut around her. Inescapable as it was devious. Edelgard had no way of knowing which details to avoid, since she had not been privy to Byleth’s debriefing. If Byleth had told Rhea _everything,_ then even the most minor omission or slight untruth could seal her fate, let alone flat-out lying about her connection to those who slither in the dark.

What would she do?

“I… I don’t think there is much else I-I can say,” Edelgard stammered nervously. What could she say to deflect Rhea’s suspicion? What could she do to hide her machinations from her greatest enemy? “I… er… I confess that I was out of sorts for most of the time I spent in Abyss.” She took a deep breath and held a paw to her forehead. “This is embarrassing, but I… I have a—a slight, minor—n, no, it is… I have a s- _severe_ phobia of rats. It doesn’t _necessarily_ extend to m-mice, but… there were a great many rats down there, and that phobia, combined with the natural s-skittishness afforded to me by my mouse instincts, well…” She shook her head and sighed. Technically, she told herself, what she had just told Rhea was true. “I am sorry, Lady Rhea. It all just feels… like a nightmare to me. One I am only just waking up from. And you know how nightmares fade away at dawn.”

“I understand.” Rhea softly cradled her in her arms. “Oh, my child, I understand.”

Edelgard sniffled and tried very hard to cry, wishing that she could have asked Dorothea for acting lessons at some point. She hated pretending to be pathetic, but it was the only trick she had up her sleeve right now. “I am sorry. I admit, my conduct is a rather… poor showing of my professor’s tutelage.”

“You did well to survive,” Rhea said, patting her on the head and gently tousling her hair. Her touch felt like poison. This was the beast that had enslaved humanity, and yet she had the gall to act _motherly,_ of all things. And worst of all, Edelgard felt as though she were melting—in a _good_ way. She _liked_ being patted on the head, by _Rhea_ of all people, much to her mounting horror. “You and your classmates have proven beyond the shadow of a doubt that your professor’s teaching skills are nothing short of exemplary. I am grateful beyond words that she has returned to us.”

“Thank you, Archbishop.”

“That said… is it true, Edelgard, that there was a failed attempt to, er… _mouse_ you six days ago, and that rather than informing me or the Knights of Seiros, you hid away and pretended to be missing for two days so that your classmates could catch the culprit on their own?”

Edelgard sighed. “Yes.”

“And is it true that after two days of inciting a frantic search of the monastery grounds for you—which was a waste of everybody’s time and effort—you were _successfully_ moused, necessitating a search _in earnest_ which concluded with your entire class turned into mice, along with your professor, half of the Golden Deer house, and roughly one-third of the Blue Lions house, including the last living direct descendants of Blaiddyd and Riegan—as well as several of the Knights of Seiros and myself?” Rhea took a deep breath, winded.

“Yes, that is the correct chain of events.” Edelgard prepared herself for more devastating questions to follow—about her relationship with the Agarthans, about her role in any of the events Cornelia had mentioned. She had no choice but to deny everything and hope that she could explain it all away as Byleth being especially credulous should their stories differ.

“This is very serious on its own,” Rhea said, stroking her whiskers. Her voice hardened. “This alone would be grounds for expulsion of your entire class.”

“E- _Expulsion?”_ Edelgard erupted, infuriated to hear Rhea’s sinister cat-and-mouse machinations lead to something so _petty._

“And the dismissal of your professor as well, for aiding and abetting you and your fellow students in this farce.”

“But Professor Byleth is—”

“However,” Rhea continued, “you and your… ‘Alliance of Four Mouses’ have done well to protect the people of this monastery, and I cannot overlook such heroism.”

“I-I had suggested ‘Alliance of Four Houses,’ Edelgard found herself stammering, “but Alois made a joke and it caught on…”

Rhea chuckled. “Oh, how like you. How like _him.”_

The archbishop’s laugh tinkled like tiny silver bells. Edelgard elected to keep her mouth firmly shut from now on.

“Still, your class’s conduct demands _some_ disciplinary response. If not expulsion, then very strict probation for all of you. Or…”

Edelgard’s nerves screamed. She’d been wrong. _This_ was the trap. She put a paw to her chest. Could Rhea hear how quickly her heart was beating?

Rhea laid her paws on Edelgard’s shoulders again, giving her a beatific smile. “Perhaps your current predicament is punishment enough. I assure you we will be returned to normal soon, though, so keep your chin up and do not despair. Remember that all creatures great and small are beloved by the Goddess. May Sothis bless you and keep you, Edelgard von Hresvelg.”

Edelgard wanted to vomit.

Rhea led her back across the floor and tugged on Seteth’s pant leg to let him know that they were ready to be brought back up.

“I do hope your conversation was productive,” Seteth said as he raised them to the table in his cupped hands.

“Very much so,” Rhea said, and to punctuate her statement she gently wrapped her arms around Edelgard in much the same way that a boa constrictor gently wrapped its coils around its prey before squeezing and crushing it to death. Edelgard smelled something sharp and heady on her breath, not entirely unlike Jeralt’s gin but more bitter and woody.

Was the archbishop _drunk?_

“Thank you, Lady Rhea,” Edelgard said, gingerly extricating herself from Rhea’s embrace and putting as much distance between herself and that monster as possible. She bowed politely.

Was that it?

Was that _it?_

Was _that_ all Rhea had wanted to say to her? What was going on? Did she not _know?_ Was this a _joke?_ Was Rhea completely and utterly soused?

Rhea gave Edelgard one last wistful, lonely smile as Seteth separated the two tables again. With the students segregated yet again (except for Hubert, who desperately leaped across the growing divide no matter how many times Seteth picked him up by the scruff of his neck and set him back onto the boys’ table), he picked Rhea up and carried her out of the classroom. The door closed with a bang; Edelgard suddenly felt as though every bone in her body had turned to jelly. Hubert and Bernadetta both rushed to her side to steady her before she could collapse.

 _“Lady Edelgard, what did she do to you?”_ Hubert hissed in her ear.

“Nothing. We only talked. I’ll tell you later.”

“I’d be scared out of my mind if I had to talk to Archbishop Rhea for that long,” Bernadetta said to her. “You’re so brave, El!”

“Edelgard, can I have a word with you in private?” Byleth asked her.

“Yes, of course,” Edelgard said, steadying herself and waving Hubert and Bernadetta away. She still felt exhausted, as though she’d run a lap around the monastery. “Let me just say that you have my gratitude, my teacher, for—”

Byleth took hold of her and gently led her aside, out of earshot of the other students. _“In case you weren’t aware, I didn’t tell Rhea anything about your… alliance, or the acts Cornelia accused you of,”_ she whispered.

“Yes, I realized that,” Edelgard said, sighing with relief that Byleth was exactly as trustworthy as she’d hoped, “although I wish you’d had the chance to tell me that before Rhea showed up.”

Byleth looked sheepish. “I would have if I could, but Rhea is… surprisingly clingy.”

Edelgard laughed, her mood brightening as the residual stress and panic from her fraught conversation with Rhea faded away.

“That said, just because I kept it a secret from Rhea doesn’t let you off the hook,” Byleth added in her stern, lecturing tone of voice. “People have gotten hurt and risked their lives these past few days, and it all stems from the partnership you had with the Agarthans. You owe the truth to everyone here, Edelgard. And you are going to tell them _exactly_ what you did on the Agarthans’ behalf and _why,_ right now.”

Edelgard sadly nodded. She’d known that this, at least, was coming. She had just wished she could have revealed her plan and her noble intentions at a time when those things had still _mattered._ Now it just felt like salt rubbed into an open wound.

“Yes,” she said, “but… _must_ I?”

“You must. They know that you worked with them already. If you don’t set the record straight, who knows what they might think you’ve done?”

She thought about what she had done. The times she had worn the mask of the Flame Emperor. The times she had stained her hands with innocent blood. The times she had led people unknowingly like lambs to the slaughter. All for the sake of her ambitions. She had always resolved that no matter what she’d done, either her triumph would serve as her atonement or her death would serve as her punishment.

And she thought to what she _hadn’t_ done. The Tragedy of Duscur. The experiments on Lysithea. She couldn’t have those evils tied to her. She still had her pride. Not much of it—but a little, at least.

“Do I have to tell _all_ of them?”

“Eventually.”

_“Now?”_

Byleth stroked her whiskers thoughtfully and cocked her head, her ears twitching as though honing in on a sound only she could hear.

“We can start small, if you would like.”

Edelgard felt her spirits lift a bit. “Only the ones I trust for now,” she said.

Byleth nodded approvingly. “And Dimitri.”

“A—” Edelgard felt a pang of nervousness strike her heart anew. “Yes. And Dimitri. Thank you for understanding. But… why did you not tell Rhea in the first place?” she asked.

“Father told me as soon as we arrived here not to trust her. His word is good enough for me.”

“Your father is a wise man. You’re lucky to have him.”

Byleth smiled and nodded, then patted her on the back and gestured to the other students. “Ready?”

Edelgard pushed back her unease. “Ready.”

The door to the classroom swung open and Mercedes of the Blue Lions house stepped through with a small tray of tiny pastries—so fresh they were still steaming—in her hands. Their sweet aroma filled the room immediately. Edelgard felt her stomach growl and whine needily.

 _“Breakfast is served!”_ Mercedes announced, her voice as soft and gentle as a wisp of clouds on a summer day.

“Actually,” Byleth said, rubbing her stomach, “it can wait until after we’ve eaten.”

* * *

Mercedes was hardly the only guest to visit the mice that day. Next was Ignatz of the Golden Deer house, who all but begged everyone to hold still for a minute so he could sketch a few details for his next painting; after him was Flayn, who wanted to know if anybody needed pets; and next was Lorenz, who tried to engage Claude in a discussion over whether he was still intent on inheriting the Riegan dukedom despite his current condition (Ferdinand masterfully distracted him, much to Claude’s apparent relief, by changing the subject to matters of tea). Raphael, who looked even more like someone had carved an ancient deity out of a solid block of butter now that he towered over everyone, stopped by to make sure everyone was well-fed and assure them that if they ate right and exercised, they’d all be back to their normal size in no time.

Sylvain, Ashe, and Felix of the Blue Lions came by almost immediately afterward to say hi to Dimitri and Dedue, although it soon became clear that Sylvain and Ashe had had to drag Felix along against his will, since all Felix did was sneer at Dimitri and say, “At least it’s wearing clothes.” Sylvain asked Bernadetta if she was still planning on writing the next chapter of that story she’d been writing and offered to go to her room and get her journal for her if it would help. She turned down his offer.

Rounding out the classes, Leonie of the Golden Deer and Ingrid of the Blue Lions visited next. Leonie was excited to announce that she would be helping Jeralt help Seteth and Gilbert build little houses for the mice. Ingrid meant to say hello to Dimitri, who didn’t seem in the mood, so Dorothea kept flirting with her until she got flustered and left.

And then, when it was all over, Byleth had Edelgard stand in front of a few hand-picked confidants—Hubert (of course) and Bernadetta, Claude and Lysithea (at Byleth’s insistence), and Dimitri (Dedue, of course, refused to leave his side)—from her new class and speak to them.

Professor Manuela burst into the room, obviously drunk as a skunk, and spent what felt like hours cooing over Dorothea and verbally berating Byleth before Professor Hanneman came and dragged her out. Evidently, she wasn’t taking well to being deprived of half of her student body.

And _then,_ when it was all over, Byleth took Edelgard aside with a hand-picked few confidants and led them off the table into a secluded corner of the classroom to meet. By this time, the sun was beginning to hang low and the light streaming through the classroom’s windows had begun to dim to a dusky amber.

Sothis crossed her arms, hovering at Byleth’s side in her usual phantasmic way. “At last we shall see what your lordling saw in those detestable Agarthans.” She shuddered. “Merely rolling that name around my mouth makes me feel ill. As though, perhaps, I had encountered them and their evil ways in a past life…”

Edelgard looked over her shoulder at Byleth, then looked to the portion of the class she was to speak to, then swallowed a mouthful of air, tapped her foot, and cleared her throat. If Byleth hadn’t known any better, she would have said that Edelgard had a bad case of stage fright.

“I suppose,” she said, “you must be wondering about the exact details of my ill-fated alliance with the Agarthans. Before I can tell you that, I must reveal to all of you the truth of this world. This is the truth passed down the Hresvelg line from parent to heir from the days of Wilhelm I. The woman you know as Archbishop Rhea is not human. She is actually an immortal dragon known as the Immaculate One. She has gone by many names in the past, including the very same Saint Seiros we have been taught to revere. And through careful manipulation of history and with the power of the Church of Seiros at her disposal, she has subtly, secretly ruled over all of us from the shadows. Her church—”

“What is this nonsense?” Dimitri hotly interjected. “Stop wasting our time, Edelgard. We need to know why you were working with those monsters, not fairy tales about immortal dragons.”

“I think it sounds like a fun story so far,” Claude said.

“Dimitri, yesterday you asked me what would lead to me treating the people who tortured me and murdered my family as the lesser of two evils,” Edelgard answered. “I am explaining to you _what_ that greater evil is.” Byleth could feel such a fire in her words that she took a reflexive step backward, as though she feared they could burn her.

At least Edelgard was back to normal.

“You expect me to believe that Lady Rhea is—”

“—The most sinister, subtle, and dangerous adversary the human race has ever faced? I don’t.” Edelgard took a deep breath. “But every word of it is true.”

Hubert cleared his throat. “Recall the sight of the great white beast that attacked the Agarthan citadel yesterday and set the city aflame,” he said. _“That_ was the true form of the Immaculate One, albeit at only a fraction of her terrifying power owing to her… current condition.”

“So…” Claude twitched his whiskers, ruminating on Edelgard’s words. “You’re saying the Church of Seiros itself is your enemy?”

“How can you think the church is worse than those… _monsters?”_ Lysithea asked. “After what the Agarthans did to you… to _us?”_

Edelgard clenched her fists. “I could spend all day explaining to you the evils of the church. How they extract wealth from the poor and use it to line their own coffers while the faithful starve with their prayers unanswered. How they keep us ignorant and divided. How they prop up a system of nobility that condemns those outside our noble families to poverty. How they kill all who oppose them and call it the will of the Goddess. How their obsession with Crests reduces people to swords and spears, brood mares and stud bulls, _science experiments…_ but I do not have all day. My goal was to cast down this corrupt and tyrannical church and do away with its system of nobility and Crests altogether.”

Lysithea was taken aback, her pale pink eyes widening. “You wanted to… get rid of Crests?”

“So, how were you gonna pull that off?” Claude asked. “I assume it has something to do with our pasty-faced friends downstairs.”

“The Agarthans are an ancient enemy of Seiros. They fought her and were nearly destroyed, and have since sought vengeance upon her and her church,” Edelgard answered. “Make no mistake, they are monsters. We have all known their evil in Duscur, in Enbarr, in the household of Ordelia, and in countless other places. They have no intention of liberating humanity—only to replace Seiros’ tyranny with something altogether worse. I intended to use them merely as long as our goals aligned, and then destroy them as soon as the Church of Seiros and anybody unfortunate enough to ally with them lay in ruins and the head of the Immaculate One lay at my feet. As you can see, they had the same idea and decided to act on it just a little sooner.”

“Enough stalling. I am not interested in hearing your manifestos, Edelgard. Tell us which of their crimes you were complicit in,” Dimitri said.

Edelgard took a deep breath. “It’s true that I was the Flame Emperor. That I hired a bandit to have you and Claude killed. That I used Lord Lonato’s rebellion as a tool for our ends. That I orchestrated the attempted ransacking of Seiros’ so-called tomb.”

“The Tragedy of Duscur was not your doing, then,” Dedue stated, glancing at Dimitri.

“No, it wasn’t,” Edelgard said. “Of the heinous acts they have committed, the genocide of your people in particular disgusts me, Dedue.”

“What about Flayn?” Byleth asked. “We met the Flame Emperor when we rescued her. Unless someone else was wearing the mask that time…”

Edelgard shook her head. “No, that was me, too. But the only role I played was in reining in the Death Knight before he could kill you. I had no further involvement. It was all the Agarthans. I swear that is the truth.” Byleth could feel the honesty in the crack of her voice.

“But you still aided and abetted them,” Dimitri said. “Did you _know_ that they were going to kidnap her? Couldn’t you have _done_ something?”

“And jeopardize my standing with them?” she retorted defensively.

“Was _that_ your most pressing concern?” he asked. He looked about ready to lunge at her, but Dedue put a heavy paw on his shoulder to hold him back.

Bernadetta bowed her head. “But…” she sighed, forlorn. “But… they _made_ you do it, didn’t they?” She kneaded her paws and looked away. “I-I’m sorry, El—I know you got mad at me last time I said that, but—ugh, Bernie, you’re the _worst,_ just _shut up—”_

Byleth gave her a comforting pat on the head.

“It is true that I couldn’t exactly refuse,” Edelgard said. There was a shaky tremor in her voice. Maybe, Byleth wondered, she’d expected to have to reveal this to her classmates—but she’d expected to reveal it from a position of strength. And not to her stepbrother.

“I’ll say. They’d have just turned you into a mouse even earlier,” Claude said. “Or worse. Maybe they were holding your family hostage as well? Er—I mean, what was _left_ of it?”

Edelgard scowled at him. Bringing him along, Byleth thought, might have been a mistake.

“Don’t think of me as merely a helpless victim.” Edelgard shook her head. “I did things for them that disgusted me, and yes, they would have indeed thrown me aside if I had refused. We’ve all seen that for ourselves now. But everything I did for them brought me closer to my goal,” she said, her voice growing louder and stronger. Byleth could feel a tempest brewing within her. “I would have gladly waged war for them against Seiros, no matter how bloody, knowing that I would be absolved by the new world I created, knowing that no sins I committed on my path could even come _close_ to matching all those who have suffered under that monster’s reign these past thousand years! And because of that, I have no… I had… I… _I…”_

Whatever word she’d planned on speaking next refused to leave her throat. Her shoulders were quaking.

“It was all so fucking _pointless,”_ Edelgard choked out, her unusually coarse language more shocking to her peers than her confession. Her words hung in the air for a few seconds.

“That… is all I have to say,” she concluded when the silence had become unbearable. She wrapped her ragged cloak tighter around her shoulders and sank to her knees. “Pity me if you wish. Hate me if you wish. If you wish to drag me in front of Seiros and let her slaughter me for what I have said and done, then so be it. None of it matters anymore.”

Dimitri’s scowl had grown especially pronounced all the way through Edelgard’s speech. He was shaking.

Hubert stepped in front of Edelgard, scowling at Dimitri, Lysithea, and Dedue. “If any of you so much as _think_ of harming her, you will have to deal with me.”

Bernadetta glanced anxiously toward Dimitri and Dedue, neither of whom looked very happy, then hurried to his side. “A-And me.” She swallowed a lump in her throat, and Byleth could only begin to imagine how terrified she must have felt to be standing in front of—and against—so many of her peers. “B-Because I believe in El’s new world, a-and if, um, i-if the Church of Seiros stands in her way, then—then that’s that! I’ll fight anyone!”

Dimitri wrenched himself free of Dedue’s grip. Bernadetta shrieked and hid behind Hubert.

“I’m with her, too,” Lysithea spoke up, stepping forward. “The Church is lying about Crests being ‘blessings’; I’m proof enough of that. I can believe they’re lying about other things, too.”

Byleth stepped in front of Hubert, Bernadetta, and Edelgard. “No one is dragging anyone in front of anyone.”

“Professor, I ask you again, how can you defend this wretch?” Dimitri asked, spitting his words through a clenched jaw. “Whatever remorse she feels, it’s only because her plans fell apart around her ears! Did she feel Seteth’s pain when Flayn went missing? Or Ashe’s pain when he had to watch the Knights of Seiros cut down a man who was like a father to him? Does she care about any of the suffering she’s caused? Does she feel any guilt for defiling the Holy Mausoleum? And do not forget that it is _her_ fault the Plague Rat destroyed the antidote and left us stuck like this!”

 _“Allegedly,”_ Claude hastily spoke up. “We don’t know if he’s destroyed the real thing yet.”

“Don’t you defend her, too, Claude. Or do you really believe a word she said about immortal monsters and historical conspiracies?”

Claude stepped in front of Dimitri. “I’m not saying I’m taking her side; I’m not as bold as Bernie or Lysithea, I’m afraid. But she’s already got _one_ brother trying to kill her. Isn’t that enough?”

Dimitri pushed him aside and pressed onward. Hubert stiffened, a rigid scowl on his face and a smoldering fury in his eyes, flames gathering in his paws. Lysithea tensed up. Bernadetta trembled like a leaf. Byleth instinctively reached for her sword, only to remember too late that she was not carrying it.

If anything bad happened, she could turn back time, she assured herself. Still, though, she still remembered the events that were undone. She’d seen her students, including Edelgard herself, die more times than anybody should, and vividly remembered the sight of their trembling bodies gasping for one last breath as they stared at her with vulnerable eyes, if they were even afforded _that_ dignity.

Dimitri looked down at Edelgard. “Tell me,” he said, his voice a little weaker, a little shakier, “that you felt _something_ when you did these things, Edelgard. Guilt, shame, reluctance, anything to show that there is still a beating heart in your chest…”

Silence fell over them.

“I’ve held no delusions of sainthood,” she said to him. “But a guilty conscience is… _was_ a small price to pay for the freedom of Fódlan. Peace of mind was the least I could sacrifice to my cause. Not that it makes any difference now.”

His shoulders slumped, his expression softened; he hung his head wearily and stepped back. “Professor, do with her as you wish,” he sighed, relenting. “Come on, Dedue. Let’s go.”

“I can trust you to keep this between us,” Byleth called out to him as he and Dedue headed across the floor, “right, Dimitri?”

“Yes,” he said. “I won’t tell a soul.”

“You can trust me, too,” Claude said. “You know how good I am with secrets.” Hubert crossed his arms and scowled. Claude mockingly crossed his arms and scowled back at him. “It’s true, you know. None of you even know my real name.”

Lysithea gasped. “Wh- _What?”_

He laughed. “My secrets aren’t quite as damning as Edelgard’s, but they’re pretty scandalous if I say so myself. Maybe I’ll tell you someday.”

“It would only be fair,” Sothis grumbled.

“I guess it’s about time we headed back to our tables,” Byleth said. “Edelgard—”

Edelgard was still kneeling on the floor, and Hubert and Bernadetta still flanked her and knelt at her side. Byleth was reminded of how Edelgard had frozen up yesterday and felt a twinge of guilt and discomfort. Seeing her brought to such a near-catatonic state yet again was a reminder that what had happened to her yesterday had done something horribly _wrong_ to her.

She knew that terrible sights or deeds could lay even the heartiest and healthiest mercenaries low. She’d seen proud, strong, fit men go into battle one day filled with bravado and return as shivering wrecks who could barely lift their swords the next. Whatever disgust she had felt learning about Edelgard’s crimes didn’t even enter her head right now—she just felt guilty that _that_ fate had befallen her brightest and best student. No application of Sothis’ power, however careful or drastic, could remedy that.

All Byleth had were her little paws, and so she took those little paws and laid them softly on Edelgard’s shoulders.

“Go on without us,” she told Claude and Lysithea. “We’ll be right behind you.”

The two of them left, leaving Byleth alone with Edelgard and her left and right wings.

Hubert glanced at her, tilted his head with the barest hint of an approving nod, and turned to Edelgard. “Lady Edelgard, it seems you were right to trust our professor. I retract what I have said about her in the past.”

“What have you said about me in the past?” Byleth asked.

“Nothing. I have retracted it.” He took Edelgard’s paw in his.

“These little ones are lucky to have you,” Sothis said to Byleth.

 _I hope so._ _How do you feel about this?_ she asked her.

“About what? Edelgard herself? Or her claims about the church?”

The very fact that Sothis had brought up the Church of Seiros apropos of nothing was proof to Byleth that she felt something about it and felt it strongly. _The church._

“I am hardly surprised,” Sothis said. “We have seen and heard plenty of people accuse the Church of corruption, and we have also seen them subsequently murdered for it. Many times by your and your students’ own swords. An institution that is not corrupt would, perhaps, _not_ immediately slay people for calling it corrupt, and it would probably not task children with doing so.”

 _It’s_ your _church._

Sothis crossed her arms over her furry little chest. “Hmph. I do not _feel_ much like a goddess, even if we _do_ share a name.”

_You literally say ‘oh my Me’ and ‘thank Me’ when others would say ‘oh my Goddess’ and ‘thank the Goddess.’_

“It’s okay, El,” Bernadetta said, gently brushing Edelgard’s fur. “It’s not pointless. You can still make a better world! Right, Professor?”

Sothis tittered. “Yes, but that is all in good fun. Tell me, Byleth, people pray to the Goddess all the time, across all of Fódlan, do they not? Were I the Goddess, would I not be too busy answering their prayers to ever deign to speak to you? Yet I do not hear a single one.”

Byleth nodded.

“See?” Bernadetta said to Edelgard. “We’ll be human again soon!”

“I believe our professor shares Claude’s opinion,” Hubert told Edelgard, “that the Plague Rat merely pretended to destroy the antidote to further wound and demoralize you. Is that accurate, Professor?”

“And I was asleep until a few months ago, when I found myself in your head! Do I look like the kind of deity who sleeps on the job?” Sothis asked, stifling a yawn.

“Yes,” Byleth answered, accidentally speaking aloud.

“See, Lady Edelgard?” Hubert shook Edelgard’s paw. “Professor Byleth and I are in agreement. Now is not the time to give in to irrational fears. Do not allow that beast to manipulate your mind.”

Edelgard sighed. “Do you really believe that, Professor?” she asked, her voice hoarse and husky.

Sothis put her hands on her hips. “Excuse me, Byleth? I ask you again, do I look like the kind of Goddess who would fall asleep and let my people’s pleas fall on deaf ears?”

“No,” Byleth said, shaking her head.

Bernadetta’s face fell. “Professor…” she moaned, disheartened.

“Oh. Sorry. I meant to say yes,” Byleth hastily assured Edelgard, stroking her fur with renewed vigor to make up for her mistake. “Yes. We will definitely be human again, and sooner than you think. Sorry. I was speaking to someone else.”

Bernadetta’s and Hubert’s heads turned as they looked around the room. And then they looked at each other, confused and mildly concerned, before turning that same bemused gaze onto Byleth.

“I like to talk to myself,” Byleth said, feeling her cheeks flush.

“But I digress,” Sothis said. “I _can_ believe that the Church of Seiros simply amasses power and wealth for its own sake. It is only inevitable that the pursuit of such a goal leads to suffering.”

_And Rhea being an immortal tyrant?_

“Whether or not _that_ is true, Edelgard certainly believes it. You saw how panicked she was when Rhea called her out. And you have sensed something unsettling about her, have you not? Your father certainly has. Perhaps you should ask him why _he_ does not trust her. She is hiding much from us.” Sothis shifted uncomfortably, her tail and ears drooping as her mouth curled in a worried frown. “She seems oddly… familiar, somehow. As though I knew her once, a long, long time ago. Oh, would that I remembered anything about my life before I found myself in your head, Byleth…”

“Professor…” Edelgard lifted her head and looked up at her, the faintest hint of a weak smile tugging at her mouth. “You are by far the oddest person I have ever met.” She looked back down. “You must be, knowing what I have done, what I had aimed to do, the lengths I had planned to go, and yet still standing by my side.”

“That’s right,” Bernadetta said to her. “There’s no one odder than us!”

“Of course I’m on your side,” Byleth said. She couldn’t act like she’d lived a morally spotless life as a mercenary. At least Edelgard fought for what she believed in. “The pursuit of a better world is an admirable thing, Edelgard. Although as your teacher, I would ask you to reconsider your methods.”

“That’s what I’ve been saying!” Bernadetta said. “See, El? Without the slitherers trying to use you, I’m sure you can come up with a better way—something we can all agree on!”

“Except for the church,” Hubert said. “Tyrants tend to not take kindly to being overthrown, whether one’s methods are peaceful or warlike. I assure you, Lady Edelgard has given much thought to this.”

“It’s… complex.” Edelgard swallowed a lump in her throat. “Excuse me. I do not feel like speaking more about this at this time, if that is alright with you, Professor.”

“Of course. I understand.” Byleth patted her on the head, and Edelgard reflexively leaned into her touch. “Take this time to rest. Bernadetta, Hubert, help her back to the dorms.”

“Yes, Professor!”

“Oh, and Hubert—try to spend more time in the boys’ dormitory tonight. I don’t think Seteth was very amused by your earlier antics.”

Hubert gave her an adorable little mousy scowl. “He was not supposed to be, Professor.”

And with that, she headed to the doors. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I am going to speak with someone about procuring some paper and pens. I cannot have a classroom without paper and pens, at least. They will need to be very small pens and very small inkwells. And we’ll need very small training weapons. And very small… everything, I suppose. Where are we going to get small enough books? There isn’t a printing press small enough…”

“You’re letting your lordling off easy,” Sothis said to her.

“What can I say? I admire her ambition.”

“I think that is not the _only_ thing you admire about her.”

 _“Er, wait, Professor, how are you going to…”_ Edelgard called out after her.

“You are at least going to give her detention, though, are you not?” Sothis asked. “Whether or not her heart is in the right place, that is perhaps the bare minimum punishment one could give for attempted murder, property damage, and aiding in an abduction.”

“I’ll think about that later,” Byleth told her. “Edelgard has enough troubling her right now. I’ll give her detention when things have settled down.”

She crossed the floor, walked over to the doors, and realized upon staring up, up, _up_ at the tall, thick, heavy oaken doors that Garreg Mach Monastery had become a very, _very_ different place for her.

“Ah,” she said to herself as Sothis giggled in the back of her head. “This… will be difficult.”

* * *

Life for the mice of Garreg Mach began to settle into a more comfortable routine over the next few days as Byleth implemented her new curriculum, and as much as Bernadetta wasn’t so keen on having so many new classmates, at least she had something to keep her mind off things in lieu of her usual hobbies.

Just try to focus on shooting arrows better, she told herself. Not about the church being led by an evil, history-rewriting dragon. Not about the fact that someday, when Edelgard was human again, she’d declare war on Archbishop Rhea. Not about the fact that when she did, Bernadetta would be right there by her side with Hubert. She was Edelgard’s left wing now, after all. There was no backing out or backing down.

Maybe she could run away and go live down in Abyss with—No, no, Yuri was down there, and _that_ bridge was a charred husk. She couldn’t even consider going home. Maybe Edelgard’s first move in the war could be to capture Garreg Mach so that she could stay in her room here whenever she wanted…

What if she had to fight the Knights of Seiros? What if she had to fight Jeralt? Or _Alois?_ She’d probably die!

Her shot went wider than she’d expected and bounced off the ‘shoulder’ of the training dummy she’d been aiming at.

Claude clucked his tongue and shook his head. “You’re slipping, Bernie. You were a fraction of a tenth of an inch off target.”

Bernadetta groaned. Why was Byleth making her train with _him?_ She looked across the floor of their little training area—the space in between the two tables in the Black Eagles classroom—to see what Edelgard was up to. Byleth, apparently delighted by their rapport, had initially thought to pair them up and have Bernadetta hone her skills with an axe and Edelgard with a bow and arrow, but had quickly switched gears upon discovering how embarrassingly, demoralizingly, and _dangerously_ terrible the two were at each others’ weapons of choice. Now Edelgard was getting a tutorial on the basics of dark magic from Hubert and Lysithea and Bernadetta was enduring Claude’s relentless teasing.

Claude’s arrow flew straight and true, clipped the target’s side, and kept flying straight and true until Alois yelped in pain and gingerly rubbed his hindquarters. “Me and my big mouth,” he muttered sheepishly, quickly setting his bow aside and pretending he hadn’t done anything. “I’m gonna go, uh, practice some lance work with Dimitri for a bit. Keep shooting those arrows, Bernie, you’re doing great!”

“Yeah, okay,” Bernadetta mumbled, not really listening. She watched Edelgard hold out her paw and produce a few paltry sparks from Lysithea’s coaching. The two of them looked like they could have been sisters. Edelgard stifled a yawn as Lysithea attempted to explain something to her. Bernadetta could tell that she was still in a melancholic mood, as much as her spirits had been lifted by having something to actually _do,_ because she was now sleeping almost as much as Linhardt did.

Suddenly, Alois was standing over her.

 _“Bernadetta!_ Is this yours?” he asked her, brandishing the wooden arrow that had struck him.

 _“Oh, you’ve really done it now, Bernie,”_ she muttered to herself as she slowly realized what was going on. “Uh…” She looked up at him and suddenly, involuntarily invited the thought of him swinging down an axe to split her in two. “I-I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to!” she cried out as she turned tail and ran away.

 _“Wait! I’m not mad!”_ Alois called out after her. _“It was a good shot!”_

In spite of everything, though, the day went by with few incidents and Bernadetta was almost sad to pack up once everyone was finished with their training and Raphael had dropped off today’s dinner. There wasn’t much to do here when Byleth was done teaching for the day, which was why (much to her surprise) she was one of the last to head back to the dormitories. Bernadetta found herself missing her old room for the umpteenth time. She needed a good book to read, or something to draw or sew, or _anything_ to do, really. If only all the books weren’t so huge and unwieldy…

_“Excuse me, Bernadetta.”_

Bernadetta whirled around and yelped, nearly leaping out of her fur at the sound of Dedue’s voice. He’d somehow come out of nowhere right behind her! He loomed over her with a face as stern and impassive as a granite statue. “Ah! I-I’m sorry! What did I do? I-I didn’t mean it—”

“I mean you no harm,” Dedue assured her. “I have heard from your classmates that you are a skilled embroiderer.”

“This is about me standing up to Dimitri the other day, i-isn’t it? Did he tell you to kill me?”

“No, this is about sewing.”

“Yes—yes, we all must reap what we have sown. I only ask that you reap gently, and send my soul quietly off to the embrace of the Goddess—wh-who I guess might be evil now, or maybe just the Church—”

“I have absolutely no ill intent toward you, Bernadetta,” Dedue insisted. “I want to ask for your help.”

Bernadetta took a deep breath and tried to calm down. Like Edelgard had said, she had to do a better job of listening to people. “With… sewing?”

“Yes. Ferdinand has told me that you are skilled with a needle.”

“Uh… I… guess I’m… okay,” Bernadetta admitted, inching away.

“I wished to ask you if you would assist me on a project for the class,” he said to her. “However, I understand your fear. I am from Duscur, after all.”

“No, it’s, um, not—Y-you just startled me,” she stammered. “Wh-What kind of project?”

“I thought it would be prudent for us to have uniforms,” he explained, “considering that we are continuing our studies. Ashe has brought me some black cloth as well as sewing needles and thread. Will you assist me? I understand if you are unable or unwilling.”

“Y-You sew?” Bernadetta asked, surprised.

Dedue nodded. “I understand that here, it is mostly regarded as women’s work. In Duscur, a man must be able to take care of himself and his household. I would say I am proficient.”

“That’s sensible.”

“I have an idea for a design. It is simple. Stay here and I will collect it.” He turned away and headed back to the boys’ dormitory (thankfully, Leonie had built ladders to make moving between the tables to the floor easier and less perilous), leaving her alone for a few awkward minutes as the sunlight streaming into the classroom slowly began to fade to golden dusk before he returned with a bundle of black cloth. “Since you are of average size compared to me, I would like you to try it on.”

Bernadetta took it from him and threw it on. It fit well—loosely, like she’d expect a robe, but not too loosely that it hung off her shoulders. The stitching was really well done, too—Dedue was a lot better than simply proficient. “It’s… plain, I guess,” she said.

“It is. However, I think we can use some gold thread to bring it more in line with our fellow students’ uniforms. According to your classmates, you are adept at this sort of thing.”

Bernadetta nodded. “Yeah, detail work like that is really relaxing! A-And I think I have a few suggestions for the design, too. But… won’t the sewing needles be too big?”

“Hmm. I have not had any trouble, but I see your point. Perhaps we should try a trial run. If you would be comfortable accompanying me…”

“Um… o-okay.”

“You are not agreeing simply because I am large and frightening, are you?”

“No, I’m interested.” And this was exactly what she needed to keep her mind off of… everything.

“Thank you. Follow me.”

Dedue had taken his supplies and set them next to the candle on the table, providing an ample and well-lit workspace. Spools of black and gold thread were stacked up along with a small pile of black cloth. The silver needles lying on the tabletop were as large as arrows and, Bernadetta soon discovered, just about as heavy.

They set to work. The sheer size of the knitting needles made work clumsy at first, but Bernadetta slowly found herself adjusting and settling into a comfortable rut. It was a relief to return to one of her hobbies. And Dedue was an excellent work partner. She’d always been so intimidated by him, but he was a gentle giant if ever there was one, and there were even more interests the two of them shared besides sewing!

“I had no idea you liked gardening,” Bernadetta said when Dedue had begun speaking of the native Duscur plants he had cultivated in the greenhouse. “I’ve never seen you there.”

“I tend to go when no one else is around.”

“Heh. Me too.”

“Are there particular plants you find interesting?”

Bernadetta launched into her typical spiel about carnivorous plants and talked for what felt like an hour.

“B-But I’m probably boring you,” she concluded when she realized how long she had been talking.

Dedue shook his head. “No. They are fascinating. You must know that Duscur has a variety of pitcher plant, like the ones in Brigid.”

“Yes, I’ve heard about them!”

The two of them kept working until Bernadetta felt like her arms were about to fall off. At the end, they had both made approximately one uniform between the two of them.

“That is enough for tonight,” Dedue said, yawning. “We have made good progress. Tomorrow I will ask Ashe to bring red, yellow, and blue cloth so that our lords’ uniforms may be distinguished from their peers.”

“Yeah…” Bernadetta rubbed her shoulders. “But these giant needles are really hard to get used to… and so heavy…”

Dedue nodded. “Yes. Perhaps we can ask if the blacksmith will make smaller needles for us. Or the knights’ exploration team may scavenge supplies from the mouse cities.”

Bernadetta yawned. She knew she would fall unconscious in an instant the second she reached her bed. “Thanks for inviting me, Dedue. I liked getting to know you.”

Dedue smiled. “As did I. I see why your liege enjoys spending time with you.”

“I’m… sorry about the bad blood between El and Dimitri.” Over the past few days, Dimitri’s attitude toward Edelgard had cooled considerably, but they still weren’t exactly on speaking terms.

Dedue shook his head. “There is no need to apologize. Their quarrel is between them, not us.”

“How do _you_ feel about Edelgard?”

“How I feel does not matter.”

“What about everything she says about the Church of Seiros?”

“I have no comment on her perspective of Fódlan’s history. Did it disturb you?”

“I… guess. Some of the knights are really nice people, o-or I thought they were, but…”

“No group of people is ever wholly evil or entirely deserving of destruction. Even if the church is corrupt, there are many within the ranks of its knights, priests, and bishops who are not your enemy. To believe otherwise leads to tragedy.” Dedue bowed his head. “You and Lady Edelgard would do well to remember that.”

“Thanks, Dedue. I-I guess I’ll head back now…” she said, fighting back a yawn and failing miserably.

“I will escort you back.” He very carefully placed a paw on her waist, as though he were afraid that the slightest pressure would break her bones like eggshells, and gently lifted her up so she could cling to his back as he climbed back down to the floor.

The sun had already set now, and the sky outside had faded to a dark violet—only faint moonlight from the night sky shone through the classroom’s windows. It was hard to see anything but shapes and outlines. At this time of day, Bernadetta could see better with her whiskers than her eyes. Only the candlestick standing next to the girls’ dormitory stood like a beacon.

Her heart skipped a beat, then started again at double speed.

There was something else here. She could feel it moving. A faint stench of decay clung to the air in its wake.

Dedue tensed up and dropped into a combat stance. “Hold on tight, Bernadetta.”

Twin lights shone in the darkness like two pale moons, and everything went dark before Bernadetta even had time to scream.

* * *

Edelgard’s rude awakenings were usually the work of nightmares and not so much the work of someone shaking her awake. A face filling her vision wasn’t a welcome, let alone familiar sight upon waking up, and nor was she used to feeling an iron grip tightening around her shoulders.

She instinctively reached for a weapon. But a cramped dollhouse with a wooden floor lined with blankets had nothing she could use to defend herself, and though she could hardly see a thing in the darkness, the voice urgently hissing her name was Hubert’s.

“Hubert?” she mumbled, blearily rubbing her eyes. She still felt exhausted from her training—she’d never realized how much of a toll magic took on its wielder, especially on beginners. It was a sort of ache that made even muscles she hadn’t used feel spent, and her head felt as though it were filled with pins and needles. “I’m awake. What’s wrong?”

“Bernadetta isn’t with you.”

“She’s—” Edelgard felt around. Bernadetta always slept by her side now, and usually _very_ close by her side. But there was no one else in the room. No weight at her side, no—no Bernie. “I’m sure she just needs some time to herself. You know how she is.” She held a paw to her mouth to stifle another yawn. “She hasn’t been alone for well over a week… must have gotten sick of me…”

“She isn’t the only student missing.”

“What?” Edelgard felt the rest of herself wake up. A thousand blood-curdling possibilities ran through her head. No one had ever found Solon and Cornelia—were they still out there with other survivors from Mousehaven? Had Anselm returned?

Hubert helped her to her feet and pulled her over the threshold of her room’s missing fourth wall. The rest of the class was gathered outside.

“She and Dedue were together this evening,” Dimitri noted, pacing nervously across the tabletop. “They were… sewing something, I believe, by the time I’d fallen asleep. And now…”

Dorothea anxiously shook her head. “I really hope they’ve just gone somewhere private to… well…”

“Dedue wouldn’t leave my side. This isn’t like him,” he said to her. “And I doubt he and Bernadetta are…”

“Yeah, definitely not. He’s like a cold fish,” Hilda said.

“We’re all getting a little stir-crazy from being cooped up in here,” Claude said. “Maybe they went out for some fresh air and a change of scenery.” The cold look in his eyes made it clear he didn’t believe his own words.

“Dedue likes the greenhouse,” Annette said. “And I’ve seen Bernie there a few times…”

“We’ve got to fan out and search the area,” Edelgard said, brushing her disturbed hair out of her eyes. “Pair up. Start with this room. There’s a lot of ground to cover in here alone.”

“How are we gonna search outside this room?” Hilda asked. “There are _cats_ out there now!”

Edelgard could almost believe that putting the cats out had been a deliberate move by Rhea to keep her and the rest of the students imprisoned in this room. On the other hand, though, those cats couldn’t just be kept in cages forever. “Very carefully. And we’ll have to send someone out anyway to get the Professor.”

“I’ll do it,” Ferdinand offered.

Edelgard nodded. “Thank you, Ferdinand. Dorothea, go with him. I believe our professor spends the night on Captain Jeralt’s desk.”

“Got it,” Dorothea said. “But… how are we going to get _out?_ Those doors are pretty heavy for a pair of mice, Edie.”

“We’ll search for an exit,” Claude said. “If Bernie and Dedue aren’t in here, then there must be a hole in the wall or something that they slipped through.”

“Willingly… or unwillingly,” Dimitri thought aloud. He shot Edelgard a cutting look that seemed to say, ‘if the Agarthans are behind this…’ “We don’t have a moment to lose.”

They hurried down the ladder and broke apart into groups. Those of the students who could use magic conjured flames or globes of light to light their way.

Edelgard set out with Hubert close by her side, a globe of roiling flame resting in his outstretched paw and casting a warm sepia glow around the two of them. She could have lit her way herself, as she could conjure something as benign as a candle’s flame after a day of study with Lysithea, but it took a lot out of her and if her worst fears were true, she would need to conserve her strength.

Then again, if her worst fears were true, the only weapons she or anyone else would have at their disposal were the rather hastily-whittled wooden training weapons Gilbert and a few of the other knights had made for them.

She watched the lights of the other search parties bob in the distance. The only other lights in the room were the guttering candlesticks on the tables, shining like the beacons of lighthouses.

“The Knights of Seiros have yet to find any survivors from Mousehaven,” Hubert said. “I would like to believe that all of their wretched filth were burned alive, Solon and Cornelia included—but I am not so optimistic.”

Edelgard felt a chill run down her spine to the tip of her tail. It wasn’t just that she feared for Bernadetta’s safety—without her at her side, she felt strangely alone, despite Hubert’s comforting presence.

“They won’t stop retaliating,” he added, “until we’ve wiped them out, each and all. Perhaps this must take priority over… clerical matters.”

“Agreed,” she said. “We might even have to… ally ourselves with the Church.”

Hubert gave her a confused, concerned look. “You are not serious, Lady Edelgard.”

“Forgive me,” she said, shaking her head. “I’m afraid I am not thinking straight. I might have overexerted myself today.”

She felt her foot land on something wet and stiffened, hastily stepping away. Hubert shined his flame on the floor—it was a dark, slick stain, too dark and too oily to be blood from any animal—more like ichor from a beast. And it stank not of copper but of decay.

A faint shout rang out across the classroom, and one of the lights near the windows flared. Someone had found something—or some _one_.

Edelgard and Hubert hurried toward the windows. The other lights converged, too, and at the stone wall underneath the windowsill, they met up with Dimitri and Annette and what they’d found.

“He’s alive,” Dimitri said, his voice strained and strangled as he propped Dedue’s unconscious and near-lifeless body up against the wall. The larger mouse’s body was limp from tip to toe, his fur stained with blood. “But he needs a healer!”

Marianne and Linhardt both rushed to Dedue’s side. Linhardt grimaced. “He’s—oh, these are—ugh…” Marianne, though, who didn’t share Linhardt’s strong aversion to blood, set to work immediately healing his wounds.

“Dedue, speak to me. What happened to you?” Dimitri said, not wasting a second as soon as Dedue’s eyes fluttered open. “Who did this? Where’s Bernadetta?”

“I am fine, Your Highness,” Dedue said, spitting out a mouthful of blood. His chest heaved. “I believe it was the beast you call the Plague Rat. He attacked us.”

Edelgard felt a pit open up in her stomach. _“Where’s Bernadetta?”_

“She was with me… assisting me with a task. I was leading her back to the dormitories when…” Dedue let out a pained, desolate sigh. “We were both tired. I was unable to protect her. I chased him this far. But he took her. I am sorry.”

“How did that thing get in here?” Dimitri asked, his voice and shoulders both shaking with a rage he couldn’t restrain.

“The same way he got out, I think,” Claude said, looking up. From the light Lysithea was shining on the wall, Edelgard could see more black stains—more of that foul-smelling ichor—speckling the stone. The trail led all the way up to the windowsill. He dug his claws into the gaps between the stones and climbed up to the sill, vanishing over it. Everyone down on the floor waited with bated breath.

 _“He smashed the window,”_ he called out to the search party waiting below. _“Must’ve been sometime today while we were distracted. Took just enough out of the corner to squeeze through.”_

Edelgard wondered how Anselm could have smashed the window without anybody hearing the glass shattering. Maybe he’d timed it and broken the glass when Raphael had slammed the doors shut on his way out, then bided his time until evening…

Claude scurried back down, a ragged scrap of paper hanging by its corner between his teeth. “I found something else, too,” he announced once he’d returned to the floor and took the paper from his mouth. “Edelgard, take a look at this.”

Edelgard found herself almost afraid to take it, but she took it from him, ignoring how much her paws were trembling. The first thing she noticed when she took the paper from him was not the writing on it, but rather the scent emanating from it.

It reeked of blood.

The writing—an inelegant and almost childish scrawl traced in sanguine ink—read:

_Edelgard—_

_Your friend who shot out my eyes is with me in the Holy Mausoleum._

_Face me there at the edge of dawn—alone and unarmed._

_If you follow these instructions—she will be released unharmed._

_If you are late or early—if you bring anybody with you—or if you carry a weapon—she will be killed immediately._

_Her life is in your paws. Give me what I am owed and it will continue—resist and it will end._

_The choice is yours._

_—Anselm_

Edelgard read it silently to herself several times before reading it aloud. Each word stuck in her throat.

“Oh my Goddess,” Hilda moaned, aghast.

“This is too cruel,” Dimitri said.

Dorothea clasped a paw over her mouth as Ferdinand stood silently by her side, in shock. “Oh, Bern… oh, Goddess…”

“That rat dastard!” Caspar seethed. “I’ll kick his ass!”

“Goddess protect her,” Marianne murmured, bowing her head.

Hubert put his paw on Edelgard’s shoulders. “Lady Edelgard… I am sorry.”

“This is great news!” Claude exclaimed.

Everybody shot him a dirty look.

 _“Excuse me?”_ Edelgard asked.

“Read it more carefully, Edelgard,” Claude said. “What are your takeaways? Firstly, Bernadetta is alive and unharmed. That’s good. Secondly, we know where she is. _That’s_ good, too. Thirdly, the Plague Rat wants you to give him what he’s ‘owed.’ What has he wanted from you all this time? Your corpse, so he can put his soul in it, bring it back to life, and take over the Empire with it! So if he still _wants_ that…”

Everyone kept staring.

“Do I have to spell it out for you guys? He’s got a way to turn you back into a _human,_ Edelgard! If he didn’t, he wouldn’t need your body! He’s got a way to turn _us_ human again! We’ll just have to rescue Bernie, defeat him, and…”

“But he said to come alone and unarmed,” Dimitri said. “Edelgard, I know you’ve been practicing magic, but…”

She shook her head. She didn’t have anywhere near enough skill to use magic to defend herself yet.

“If we’ve learned anything, it’s that you can’t win by doing what your enemy says,” Claude told Dimitri, winking. “Don’t you worry. I’ve got an idea.”

* * *

Bernadetta had never had such a hard time waking up, and as soon as she opened her eyes, she found herself wishing she hadn’t. She awoke to find herself tied to a stake with thick, heavy twine that bound her ankles together and pinned her arms to her sides. A single loop was wrapped around her neck just tightly enough that she could feel the knot press into the hollow of her throat with every breath she took or mouthful of spit she tried to swallow.

And standing before her was a corpse-pale, hairless mouse with thick, pulsating veins tracing its naked flesh. Only a few wisps of white hair crowned the back of its bald head. His eyes were jet black and with irises like golden rings, one fixed in a squint and the other bulging out like a frog’s eye.

 _“Are we awake?”_ he hissed, his mouth curling in a wicked smile.

Bernadetta squirmed and writhed against her bonds. The knots were so firm and the ropes so tight, though, that she could barely manage that.

“Ah, we are.” He lifted a paw and brushed a lock of her messy hair out of her eyes. “We must have you looking your best for the sacrifice. She will need to see those big, pretty eyes of yours for maximum effect,” he said, cackling. “Do you think she will come alone and unarmed, like you told her?” he asked someone standing behind her.

Bernadetta _felt_ the thing behind her, felt its presence displace the air with her whiskers, smelled the stench of decay clinging to it, and felt panic strike her heart.

The creature stepped forward and circled around her to join the naked mouse at his side. It was the Plague Rat—No, _Anselm._

Edelgard’s long-dead brother.

He was now shorn of all his armor—and the fur and flesh beneath was charred and mangled, with ugly half-healed wounds and oozing burns. Patches of skin had turned sickly and mottled and in some places had sloughed off entirely, revealing livid organs and the sharp curves of alabaster bones. Black ichor leaked from the oozing wounds, dripping onto the stone floor. Still, somehow, despite being a half-rotted corpse, the beast lived. His death’s-head mask still covered his face, and his eyes still gleamed like full moons in a clear night sky within the eye sockets of his skull. Two serrated kitchen knives were slung over his back, forming an X-shape like the crossbones beneath the skull on a pirate’s flag.

“I almost hope she does not,” Anselm spoke. He reached out and let a blackened claw ghost along the underside of Bernadetta’s jaw, lifting her head. A tremor ran through her body. She wanted nothing more than to run and hide. “I want to see the look on her face when I clip her wing. Whenever I see that… it makes me so… _nostalgic.”_

“But I hope she brings her friends, too. What an opportunity to eliminate both our traitor emperor and the Fell Star in one fell swoop!”

“I see your eye is still bigger than your stomach, Solon,” Cornelia’s voice rang out as she stepped over to the others, running a paw frustratedly through her tangled pink mane. “We’ve had plenty of hardship already. Let’s just hope little El makes this easy for us. Tonight, I want to toast the future coronation of Anselm von Hresvelg, rightful heir of Ionius IX and first emperor of the mighty Agarthan Empire!”

“You will,” Anselm growled, pleased with himself. “Whether she comes armed or not, alone or not, she will either submit of her own accord or die crossing blades with me. Either way, we shall triumph today. What do you think, Bernadetta? Will she come to us alone? Or does your life have no value to her?”

Bernadetta took stock of her surroundings, as it was the only way she could even attempt to ignore the rogue’s gallery of monsters gathered before her or the morbid thought that Edelgard might choose to sacrifice herself for her. It was gloomy and cavernous, vast stone walls and columns vanishing into a dark and abyssal ceiling and lit only by ornate torches lining the walls. Beautifully-patterned stone tiles lined the floor and ornate frescoes were traced into the walls.

She remembered this place. The Holy Mausoleum. This was the place where her class had first encountered the Death Knight—where Byleth had found the Sword of the Creator. The place where Matthias had first seen Edelgard. The place where all of this had begun.

“Answer me,” Anselm growled, leaning into her, looming over her. Bernadetta felt his hot, rancid breath against her whiskers and nearly fainted.

“Wh-Why are you doing this t-to her?” she mumbled instead.

 _“Why?_ Because _she_ condemned me to death! I died on Solon’s operating table because of her. But my soul refused to join the Goddess in death and remained tethered to this world.” He turned his back on her, prodding at his thick and blackened claws. “Seven years now I have been moving from body to body, condemned to be nothing but a foul, flea-ridden rodent. Now that she has tasted a fraction of my pain, I will take from her what she took from me.”

“Dawn approaches,” Solon noted. “I can feel it. Do you think she will come, Anselm?” he asked.

Anselm let out a frustrated grumble. “The El I knew is cowardly enough to run away and never look back. But _Edelgard_ will come.”

Part of Bernadetta hoped that Edelgard would swoop down from the ceiling and rescue her. The rest of her _feared_ she would. Her heart throbbed in her chest; her pulse roared in her ears.

 _“Anselm!”_ Edelgard’s voice rang out through the gloomy tomb. To Bernadetta’s relief and horror, she crossed the vast tiled floor, solitary and empty-pawed, her glossy white fur gleaming in the torchlight.

She looked so strong and beautiful that Bernadetta wanted to cry. The Plague Rat was going to kill her. She wouldn’t even be able to put up a fight—and it would be all Bernie’s fault!

“Right on time, I see,” Cornelia purred. “For once, our disgraced Flame Emperor does as she’s told.”

Anselm laughed. “Edelgard! Did you think I was done with you?”

 _“No, get back!”_ Bernadetta shouted out at her. _“Run! It’s a trap! My life’s not worth this—”_

Filled with shock at the sight of her, Edelgard’s eyes widened and she took a hurried step back.

Anselm’s blade kissed Bernadetta’s throat, silencing her next scream before it could slip off her tongue. “You know what happens if you run,” he growled at Edelgard, gently pressing the knife just a little closer, enough that Bernadetta felt one of the scalloped points of the serrated blade prick her skin.

Shaking her head and tossing back her mane of hair, Edelgard composed herself. “You wear a corpse well, Anselm,” she said, defiant as she was desperate, with only the faintest tremor of fear in her voice.

“As do you, dear sister,” Anselm retorted. He spat out the epithet as though it were a curse. “It’s only fitting—as my path lies over your grave.”

“I don’t suppose we can hug it out,” she quipped mirthlessly at him.

“You took everything from me just by surviving,” he spat back. “I can only thank you for coming to correct your mistake, even if you _are_ seven years late.”

“Ah. So _that’s_ what you think. You’ll pardon me if I don’t waste any effort trying to make you see reason.”

Edelgard’s words were hollow. Bernadetta knew that—because the Plague Rat was voicing the very same things she had said to her herself these past few days. She believed what he was saying. She thought his words were true; her retorts were nothing but empty bravado, a futile attempt to intimidate him, one last gasp of defiance.

Nevertheless, Edelgard kept advancing, to Bernadetta’s mounting despair. She couldn’t do this—the life of a stupid waste of noble blood wasn’t worth a princess and an empire! _“El, please! Get away!”_ she choked out, feeling the blade’s serrated edge bite just a little deeper into her skin for her transgression.

And yet, no matter what she shouted at her, Edelgard continued onward. As composed as she seemed, though, Bernadetta could almost feel the manic terror radiating off her. And her gait was unsteady. She wasn’t just unarmed and alone—she was _tired._ And afraid. And yet even so…

“Oh?” Anselm cocked his head. “You aren’t listening to the pleas of your dear companion? Instead of running away like the coward you are, you’re coming closer?”

“I can’t put you out of your misery without coming closer,” Edelgard said.

Bernadetta felt her eyes well up with tears. Edelgard was really going to do it, wasn’t she? She was going to let him kill her… let him win… so _Bernadetta von Varley,_ the most useless noble in the empire, could live! _“El, please! I’m not worth it!”_ she sobbed. She had to run! She had to run as fast and as far away as she could!

Why wasn’t she running? Did she want to die? Was this just her way of committing suicide?

_“El, please! Your life still matters! Don’t give it to him!”_

Anselm’s grin was so wide that Bernadetta could see it beneath his helmet. Drool dripped from his mouth in thick, viscous strands. “Yes… only _you_ can put me out of my misery, Edelgard. And I will extend to you the same courtesy—and fill that empty shell you stole from El…”

“The only husk here is you,” Edelgard said. “I see nothing in you of the Anselm I once knew. You can only parrot his words.”

“And what of _you?_ Where is _El?_ If you are so ashamed of her, then I will gladly take her face from you!”

“Then come and take it,” Edelgard said, coming to a stop. “But untie Bernadetta first. Let her go. Let her go… and you can have everything you want from me.”

 _“El, no!”_ Bernadetta sobbed. _“Please!”_

“And who are you to be making demands?” Cornelia asked with a smarmy grin. “You’ve already offered yourself to us. You’re alone and unarmed. We can take you and keep poor Bernie for ourselves and you can’t do anything about it!”

Edelgard’s face fell. Everything seemed to fall away from her. Her chest heaved, her paws shook, her tail lashed anxiously to and fro, her ears and whiskers twitched backward. If she’d come here with any kind of plan, it was clear to Bernadetta that it had just failed.

“It’s over, Edelgard.” Solon flung out his paw. “Today, _we_ become the saviors of humanity! Today, the bloodline most beloved by Seiros falls! Today, the thousand-year Adrestian tale ends! _Anselm! Take back your birthright! Kill her!”_

With a feral snarl, Anselm lunged forward, drawing a monstrous knife in each paw and swinging them downward as the distance between him and Edelgard dwindled to nothing. His gleaming blades shone in the torchlight like the sun at dawn as they cut through the mausoleum’s stale air and descended upon her, yearning to taste blood.

 _“El!”_ Bernadetta screamed, the name tearing itself out of her throat in a howl as anguished as it was desperate.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 


	13. Wings of the Hegemon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With Bernadetta's life hanging in the balance, Edelgard faces the Plague Rat for the last time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "i don't care if it's 'normal mouse behavior' claude i'm not letting you pet me"
> 
> "edelgard said it's my turn to use the brain cell"
> 
> Art by [@PatManDX](https://twitter.com/PatManDX)

Edelgard stared into the face of death. She lifted her head to meet his baleful gaze, eyes wide, mouth agape, shoulders quivering like the last leaf on a dying tree.

Her brother’s skeletal mask filled her vision—everything on the periphery had faded into the walls of a long, dark tunnel. Pale yellow-gold eyes gleamed within abyssal black eye sockets. The gleaming serrated blades swinging down moved at an agonizingly, achingly slow crawl, as though cutting through tar instead of air.

As slowly as he moved, she was even more sluggish. The blood in her veins had frozen, and even the Crest of Flames couldn’t thaw her petrified muscles. Claude’s plan had failed. No help was coming. No one was coming to save her. Neither her nor Bernie.

The blades fell like glittering guillotines above her, cutting a path to the end of a dream.

 _“El!”_ Bernadetta cried out, her ragged and plaintive wail muffled to Edelgard’s ears as though it were reaching her through an ocean of deep, dark water.

 _“I’m sorry, Bernie,”_ Edelgard tried to whisper.

For an instant, she felt very warm.

And then she felt very, very cold.

* * *

Disoriented and sick to her stomach, her head throbbing, Byleth steadied herself and held up the Sword of the Creator. Her paws clasped tightly around its hilt. The blade hung steadfast above her to parry the Plague Rat’s attack, the sword’s bony umbral steel blazing from within with a fiery glow. She pushed aside the transient nausea and grogginess lingering from Lysithea’s warp spell, expecting to feel the Plague Rat’s knives grind against the superior blade of her sword.

Nothing.

She realized a split second too late that she had materialized several paces behind Edelgard instead of right in front of her. Desperately, she sprung into action, whipping her blade forward. The spiny segments of the Sword of the Creator split apart, each vertebral column glowing like flames in the darkness. The extended blade shot forward and buried its tip right between the Plague Rat’s eyes, shattering his bony brow—but it wasn’t enough.

And it was already too late.

Both blades were already biting into Edelgard’s shoulders and slicing downward, serrated edges chewing through muscle and sinew and sawing through bone. Byleth watched blood spurt from the wounds—watched it darken Edelgard’s ratty cloak to an abyssal black, watched it pool around her as her limp and lifeless body crumpled to the floor.

She watched Edelgard die.

The Plague Rat laughed and kicked Edelgard’s bloody corpse, ignorant of the blood and ichor pouring through the gaping hole between his eyes. “Where are your defiant words _now,_ Edelgard? What do you have to say _now?”_

 _“El!”_ Bernadetta screamed again, staring helplessly at the carnage before her. She was bound to a wooden stake, the stairs leading up to the dais of Seiros’ empty coffin at her back, Solon and Cornelia flanking her. _“El… p-please… get up! You can’t be…”_

“Do not touch the girl!” the Plague Rat called to Solon and Cornelia over his shoulder. He gazed hungrily at Byleth. _“I_ will carve her up myself… once I have dealt with this ‘Fell Star’ of yours!”

A flash of black light filled the still and silent crypt. The Plague Rat froze midstep. Bernadetta stood, immobilized even further, her mouth gaping open in a silent and endless scream of horror and anguish. Solon’s and Cornelia’s wicked grins were fixed on their faces. Even Byleth herself was reduced to a statue—yet the gears still turned in her mind and Sothis’ voice still reached her ears.

This was far from the first time she’d used Sothis’ power, her ‘divine pulse,’ to save Edelgard’s life. The first had been when the bandit Kostas had tried to kill her in Remire. She’d seen Edelgard caught unaware, off-guard, raising an arm futilely to defend herself against the bandit’s axe, her eyes filled with fear (and, in hindsight, now that Byleth knew the truth about that night, betrayal)—but with the power of the divine pulse, she had turned back the hands of time and stepped in to save her.

Perhaps she had known right then, at the very beginning, that she was meant to stand at Edelgard’s side.

Time fell away from her. The world began to run in reverse, silent and devoid of any sense save for sight, slipping by faster and faster. Edelgard stood back up; the knives ripped themselves free of her flesh. Byleth lowered her arm and stepped back as a brilliant light engulfed her and carried her over the partition between the darkness of the mausoleum and the guttering torches flanking Seiros’ empty grave, into the shadows to Lysithea’s side. Her past actions and the moving world around her sped by until time resumed its normal forward flow.

She stood with her students before the imposing and thoroughly locked doors to Seiros’ holy mausoleum, gathered before a gap between one of the heavy bolted doors and the solid stone wall of the monastery’s grand cathedral. A faint sliver of the sun was beginning to creep above the horizon; the sky had turned from black to a brightening violet with a fiery orange glow rising above the distant mountains and forests.

It was just her, Claude, Dimitri, Lysithea, and the Black Eagles minus Bernadetta. The rest of the mice were seeing to it that Dedue received treatment for his injuries. Truth be told, Byleth was uneasy about bringing a party as large as even this to accompany Edelgard, but none of her eagles would stay behind.

As soon as time began to flow forward and Byleth was in control of herself again, her gaze focused itself upon Edelgard. Edelgard, pristine and unharmed, nervously pawing at the hem of her tattered cloak as she held it tightly over her shoulders, her mane of silvery-white hair messy and disheveled from her rude awakening. Though she kept a firm and solemn face, the way her ears and whiskers were pinned back and the troubled look in her lavender eyes belied her composure. If she hadn’t known any better, Byleth might have thought that Edelgard, too, had foreseen the gruesome death she herself had just witnessed.

“So, is everyone clear on the plan?” Claude asked. “We’re going to—Teach, what’s wrong?”

Byleth snapped out of it. It was always disorienting to turn back time, especially to see a dead body live once more. “I’m fine,” she answered with a shake of her head. “It’s nothing.”

“This might be your last chance to tell him that this is a bad idea,” Sothis said to her.

“No, the idea is sound,” she muttered in response, unaware she was speaking aloud, “we just have to execute it perfectly.”

Claude gave her a look that was half amused, half concerned. “Talking to your ghost again, huh?”

“Ugh!” Sothis put her paws on her hips. “I am _not_ a ghost! Byleth, tell this insolent child that I am not a ghost!”

Byleth ignored her, and tried to ignore that Claude had caught onto the existence of her intangible conversation partner. “Lysithea, are you positive you can pull off a warp spell like we’ve discussed?”

“Yes,” Lysithea said emphatically. Byleth could feel beneath her confident words, though, that she was ill at ease. She’d only recently started practicing that spell and hadn’t used it in any real-world situations yet—and Byleth knew from personal experience, having seen a possible future, that her range wasn’t as great as she’d hoped. “You don’t have to worry about me. I’ll pull it off perfectly.”

“Just to be certain, we’ll have to get as close as possible without revealing ourselves,” Byleth said. “Does anyone else have any issues with the plan?”

“For the umpteenth time,” Ferdinand said, stepping in front of Edelgard, “I cannot sanction it. I cannot! Lady Edelgard, facing the Plague Rat alone is suicide!”

“For once, Ferdinand and I are in complete agreement,” Hubert added. “We cannot trade your life for Bernadetta’s.”

“If we all rush the Plague Rat at once,” Caspar said, “we can take him down before he can hurt Bernie, right?”

“We don’t know their numbers,” Edelgard said. “For all we know, he could have an army behind him.”

It was the same conversation Byleth had heard just a few minutes ago. “Two,” she said.

Everyone looked at her.

“Two _people,”_ she clarified, “not two armies.” She shrugged. “Just a hunch.”

“Surely it would be easier to let them kill Bernadetta and then call in the Knights of Seiros to, I don’t know, step on them?” Linhardt pointed out. Everyone shot him a dirty look. “They’re _mice._ Captain Jeralt could just put his foot down and that would be the end of it. Literally.”

“That’s the most disgusting thing I’ve ever heard you say,” Dorothea said to him, glaring. “But Edie,” she added, “we can’t trust them to spare Bern’s life… even if you do as they say.”

Edelgard nodded. “Nothing we do can guarantee her survival, but… this is the only way she has even the slimmest chance of living.” She sounded unusually quiet. “We’ll make him think he’s won, then turn _his_ trap into _our_ trap. We don’t have the time to set up anything more elaborate.”

“I think Claude’s plan will work if we all do our best,” Dimitri said, hefting a blunt wooden spear and staring almost mournfully at how sharp its spearhead _wasn’t._ “I just wish we’d saved our real weapons from Mousebrook. Not to say I don’t appreciate Gilbert’s woodcarving skills, but…”

“We will have to be making do,” Petra said, prodding a blunt wooden arrowhead. “Even a blunt arrow can have stopping power if it flies true.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Claude said. He offered a nervous glance to the sun peeking over the distant mountains. “It’s the edge of dawn. We can’t delay any further. Teach, give the word and we’ll move out.”

Byleth nodded. “Let’s go.”

Sothis yawned. “I hope you do not squander all of my power here… who knows when next you might need it?”

Edelgard made her way to the crack in the wall and took a deep breath. Byleth reached out and laid a paw on her shoulder, feeling the warmth of her living flesh underneath her clothes and fur, knowing that she might yet see her dead again before this morning was over.

Edelgard looked back at her and rested her own paw atop hers. “Thank you, Professor. I do not know what awaits us in there…” She stared almost nervously into the darkness of the mausoleum. “But I am glad to know that in spite of everything, you will be behind me through it all.” A fragile smile crossed her face.

She climbed into the crack, wormed her way through, and vanished into the darkness.

Byleth could only hope things went better this time.

* * *

“It’s over, Edelgard.” Solon flung out his paw. “Today, _we_ become the saviors of humanity! Today, the bloodline most beloved by Seiros falls! Today, the thousand-year Adrestian tale ends! _Anselm! Take back your birthright! Kill her!”_

With a feral snarl, Anselm lunged forward. The distance between him and Edelgard dwindled to nothing. His gleaming, serrated blades hung in the air above him and swung down in a silvery arc.

 _“El!”_ Bernadetta screamed, the name tearing itself out of her throat in a howl as anguished as it was desperate.

Edelgard stared into her brother’s golden eyes, into the face of death, meeting his baleful gaze, eyes wide, mouth agape, shoulders quivering like the last leaf on a dying tree. Paralyzed. Petrified. Helpless. Alone. For a moment, a moment that stretched into eternity, she could _feel_ the knives sawing into her flesh and bones, the waterfalls of hot blood cascading down her cooling flesh, the searing heat that gave way to vast and bitter cold. At the last moment, with the blades bearing down on her, fear struck her—that nobody was coming to her aid, that she was alone, that just as the Goddess had abandoned her in her time of need all those years ago, so too had Byleth—

A pillar of light burst from the floor in front of her. Edelgard stumbled backward, startled, as the vortex of sparks dissipated to reveal the form of her professor. The Sword of the Creator was raised above her, as stalwart and steadfast as the mightiest shield, and Anselm’s serrated knives met their match in the sword’s vertebral blade as common steel clashed with umbral steel.

 _“What?!”_ Anselm roared, enraged.

 _“Professor!”_ Edelgard cried out, her spirits lifted.

 _“Professor!”_ Bernadetta wailed, tears pouring anew from her eyes.

 _“Fell Star!”_ Solon snarled, waving his paws to ready a wicked spell. Cornelia grabbed a fistful of Bernadetta’s hair and yanked her head up. “Just as I had—”

An arrow zipped through the air, flying straight and true, and though its arrowhead was carved from wood and was as blunt as blunt could be, when it impacted against the hollow of Solon’s throat, it turned his next words into a choked and incoherent gurgle as his windpipe collapsed. At the same time, another arrow, just as straight and just as true, cracked against Cornelia’s wrist; with a howl of pain, she let go of Bernadetta and cradled her paw.

The arrows were only the first volley. A beam of hard blue-white light crackling like lightning ripped through the air, its momentary flash lighting up the darkness beyond the torchlight and revealing its caster—Dorothea, vicious anger writ all over her face (Edelgard had almost forgotten how frightening she could be when she was mad). Still reeling, Solon barely managed to scurry out of the way and return a burst of dark magic of his own. Cornelia was not so lucky—a bombardment of dark magic from Hubert and Lysithea’s combined efforts hit her head-on and threw her against the stairs with enough force to leave cracks in the polished stone.

 _“Fear not, Bernadetta!”_ Ferdinand cried out, rushing into the fray as fast as his mousy legs could carry him. _“We have come to your aid!”_

 _“Get Bernie!”_ Byleth shouted to Edelgard as her blade met Anselm’s again. The orders of her teacher roused Edelgard into action, piercing through her shock, and she rushed forward. Volleys of arrows and magic flew past her in a sudden onslaught; pushed away by Claude and Petra’s archery and Hubert, Dorothea, and Lysithea’s magic, Solon and Cornelia had no choice but to leave Bernadetta wide open.

 _“Get back here, Edelgard!”_ Anselm roared, pivoting to swing one of his blades at her. She felt the sharp steel graze her back just enough, just barely enough, to knock her off her feet and send her tumbling tip over tail. _“You’ve run from me for the last time!”_

As Edelgard scrambled to her feet, she felt his blades loom over her yet again. But the Sword of the Creator lashed out and ripped through Anselm’s rotting flesh, liberating gouts of blood and ichor, and forced to defend himself, he had no choice but to grind his blades against Byleth’s sword yet again. _“Out of my way!”_ he snarled.

The force of his blows sent Byleth skidding backward, but she dug in her heels. “No,” she snarled back. “I have a lesson to teach you—” She extended the blade into a burning length of whip and brought it down on him. _“No one hurts one of my students!”_

Edelgard rushed to Bernadetta’s side and started fumbling with the twine that bound her. The shock, surprise, and gratefulness reflected in her wide, frightened eyes was heartbreaking. How long, Edelgard wondered, had Bernadetta been imprisoned here? How much torture had she endured from these fiends? She couldn’t see any marks save for flushed marks and bruises where she’d been gripped too tightly or the ropes had bitten into her flesh, but who knew what pain the Agarthans could inflict without leaving a mark?

 _“El…”_ Bernadetta sniffled. _“Y-You came for me…”_

 _“Of course. I told you I needed you, Bernie,”_ Edelgard hissed, struggling with the twine. If she were being honest with herself, she still couldn’t shake the feeling that she would never be human again, no matter how Bernadetta and Hubert and Byleth consoled her; her friendship with Bernadetta was the only thing she had left to lose.

_“I thought you were gonna die…”_

_“Perish the thought.”_ Her paws slipped. The knots were tight, and in her frenzied state, the dexterity for finer work eluded her. Her heart felt as though only the pressure of her ribcage was keeping it from exploding; she kept finding herself entertaining the thought of wrapping her arms around Bernadetta as tightly as the ropes that bound her. She wasn’t used to being burdened so _heavily_ with such feelings.

On top of that, she kept finding herself distracted, glancing over to Byleth’s duel with Anselm, to the arcs her fellow students’ bombardment swept across the mausoleum to further drive Solon and Cornelia away.

In spite of her skill, Byleth was struggling against Anselm’s brute strength; his furious strikes were beating her back. More and more she struggled to keep him occupied, darting in front of him whenever he tried to escape her and head for Edelgard, but she wouldn’t be able to stay so light on her feet forever. Edelgard could already tell that she was slowing down, and the blazing light overtaking the Sword of the Creator was guttering like the flame of a spent candle.

Solon was beginning to gain the upper hand against Dorothea; his dark magic was overpowering her blasts of lightning, allowing him to put her on the defensive and creep further inward back to his old position. She was weakening—there wasn’t much magic left in her. But Solon was old and skilled and had far vaster reserves—if she drew from a pool, he had an ocean within him. When her next arc of lightning went wide, he exploited the opening she left and bound her in a mire of miasma that spread under her feet like a tar pit.

Petra tried her best to keep up her volley from the shadows, but Solon could easily incinerate most of the blunt, wooden arrows she fired with a wave of his paw, and those that struck him could do little more than bruise his pale, wrinkled flesh. Caspar leaped to Dorothea’s aid, baring claws, fangs, and axe as he charged Solon.

Cornelia, though weakened and battered, managed to strike Lysithea with a life-draining spell, bringing her to her knees while rejuvenating her own body. Linhardt was quickly at Lysithea’s side to restore what had been taken with a healing spell, but her incapacitation left Hubert alone against Cornelia, and though Hubert’s mastery of dark magic had always impressed Edelgard, he was little match on his own for the likes of Cornelia. A burst of black and violet light struck him square in the chest and knocked him off his feet, throwing him violently against the floor.

Edelgard’s fingers kept slipping around the knots. She had to free Bernadetta now. The sooner she untied her, the sooner they could all retreat. But it seemed the pressure just made it harder for her to focus on the task at hand. She’d never struggled so much with something so simple.

 _“I’ve got you, Bernadetta!”_ Ferdinand shouted out, weaving between Anselm and Byleth and diving under an errant swing of a knife as he hurried to Bernadetta’s side. His paws dove into the mass of twine and he began untying her with unmatched gusto. “Leave Bernadetta to me, Your Highness. You must escape while the Plague Rat is still—”

 _“El, watch out!”_ Bernadetta screamed.

Edelgard jerked her head upright just in time to see Cornelia bearing down on her, no longer pinned down by Hubert’s or Lysithea’s magical attacks. A blossom of fire bloomed in her paw and she flung it outward. Edelgard could feel the heat from the oncoming fireball crackling her fur, singeing the tips of her whiskers. If she leaped out of the way, the fire would consume Bernadetta and Ferdinand both; if she stayed, it would kill her. All this effort, all this planning, to face the same choice as before…

A mighty swing of a wooden spear, so mighty that the shaft splintered from contact with the air alone, swept through the fireball; the rush of wind it brought in its wake reduced the blaze to scattered wisps of flame and flurries of sparks.

 _“You,”_ Dimitri spat as he stood in front of Cornelia. “I’d hoped I would find you again. No use running this time!”

Cornelia let out a derisive laugh as she dodged a swing of his spear. “Still defending that girl? After what she did to your parents?”

“She had nothing to do with that!”

 _“Did_ she? Dimitri, don’t you find it odd that your stepmother’s body was never found? They left your dear old, dead old dad’s head for you to find, but… isn’t it curious that not so much as a scrap from mommy’s clothes were ever found?”

Dimitri parried another one of her spells with less success, the blast of flames singeing his fur and forcing him backward. “That’s—”

“Your poor stepmother… she once told me she would do _anything_ to see her daughter again…”

Edelgard felt her blood run cold as Cornelia’s words trickled through the chaos into her mind. Was she really claiming…

 _“Enough of your lies!”_ Dimitri howled, his next strike driving into her stomach and doubling her over. Her eyes bulged out of her sockets, spit and blood flying from her mouth. The force of his attack lifted her off her feet.

She turned tail and ran, ducking under a hail of arrows from Claude. _“Enough of this, you stupid little worms!”_ She ripped a metal canteen from her belt, popped off the cap, and chugged it. _“When I’m human again, I’ll crush you under my heel—”_

Dimitri cracked his spear against her skull and she slumped to the floor. Her body began to writhe and twist, slowly growing in size and changing in shape. Edelgard realized that she’d just drunk _antemorphus muridae—_ so Claude _had_ been right! They still had a supply of the antidote!

 _“Cornelia, you utter fool!”_ Solon snarled, stumbling backward as one of Petra’s arrows struck him dead center in the chest and narrowly avoiding a concussion from the blunt side of Caspar’s axe (although with a wooden training axe, both sides were the blunt side). He tossed Caspar aside with a wave of miasma. _“And stop_ bothering _me, vermin!”_

Bernadetta’s bindings loosened and sloughed off, and she immediately pitched forward just as limply as the twine pooled on the floor, falling into Edelgard’s waiting arms as though her bones had turned to jelly. Edelgard caught her and held her tight. “I’ve got you,” she assured her.

 _“Lady Edelgard, get out of here now!”_ Ferdinand readied his wooden spear as Solon closed in on him. _“I’ll hold him off for as long as I can!”_ But melee and magic rarely mixed, and he knew it. There was fear in his eyes.

“Me, too,” Dimitri said, rushing to Ferdinand’s side. “Edelgard, Bernadetta, both of you _—now!”_

Solon flung out his paw and rays of light traced a magic seal before him. _“Not a single one of you will escape!”_

Edelgard wrapped her arm around Bernadetta’s waist and hoisted her along, but had hardly taken a single step before the slick stone beneath her feet turned to cold, wet sludge. She sank up to her ankles in the muck and try as she might, no matter how she struggled, she couldn’t free herself.

 _“Dammit!”_ Ferdinand swore, and if Edelgard hadn’t already been well aware of the peril she was in, his willingness to let such coarse language spill from his lips made it clear that they were well and truly fucked.

Anselm whirled around. _“Solon!_ She’s _mine!”_ he barked, breaking off from Byleth and rushing ahead, throwing aside his knives and galloping on all fours toward Edelgard. The Sword of the Creator telescoped after him; he ducked under the segmented blade, caught it in his paw, and yanked on it with all his might, wrenching Byleth off the floor and tossing her through the air. Edelgard could only helplessly watch her teacher sail in an arc through the air like she’d been launched from a trebuchet.

She, Ferdinand, Dimitri, and Bernadetta were mired in dark magic sludge. Hubert was down. Byleth had just been catapulted into Seiros’ coffin. Linhardt was still trying to rouse Lysithea back to consciousness. Dorothea was healing Caspar’s concussions and the burns he’d suffered from Solon’s magic. Claude and Petra could only do so much with blunt arrows. Her classmates were falling one by one, and for Edelgard and Bernadetta, nothing about their situation had changed.

Edelgard looked up into Anselm’s golden eyes. At least she could be defiant in her last moments. “Take what you’re owed, then,” she spat.

Dimitri threw his spear at Anselm and nailed him in the chest. Then he grabbed Ferdinand’s spear out of his paws and threw it at Anselm, nailing him in the chest again.

Anselm simply ripped both spears free and tossed them aside. _“Good riddance, Edelgard!”_ he crowed. Starburst-shaped flares of light blossomed in his golden eyes.

 _“El—”_ Bernadetta gasped, burying her face in Edelgard’s chest. Edelgard rested her paw against the back of her head, stroking her disheveled mane of violet hair one last time.

And then, with a ragged cry, Petra leaped onto his shoulders, wrapping her legs around his neck. In one fluid motion, she brought her bow against Anselm’s throat and jerked his head up. _“We will not be losing!”_ she snarled.

Claude raced after her. _“Wait, Petra, no—”_

A blossom of fire lit up the ceiling and a shower of masonry fell over Anselm, pinning both him and Petra to the floor under shards of marble.

 _“Petra!”_ Dorothea half-shouted, half-sobbed.

“No matter,” Solon scoffed, holding out his paw and preparing to cast a spell. “Anselm will cling to that body as long as he must—our savior will not be killed so easily! But _you,_ on the other hand—”

Though he was just as ensnared as Edelgard, Ferdinand made a valiant, albeit vain effort to put himself between her and Solon. “Lady Edelgard… should this be as far as I go, tell my father—”

“Oh, cease your prattle, brat,” Solon sneered. “I shall snuff out all your lives in an instant— _ghurghk—”_

His eyes bulged, his back arched, and his words vanished into a short, strangled gurgle as he slumped to the floor with a knife protruding from his back. In an instant, the mire that had ensnared Edelgard dissipated, freeing her, Bernadetta, Ferdinand, and Dimitri.

“How does it feel?” Kronya snarled, standing proudly and triumphantly over Solon. “Hurts, doesn’t it? Getting stabbed in the back like that?” She kicked him as he writhed weakly on the floor, wheezing and gasping for breath as blood seeped through his robes. “How about _this?”_

Edelgard couldn’t believe what she was seeing. _“Kronya?”_ she gasped.

Ferdinand let out a cheer and clapped his paws. “Aha! I knew something would come of our heart-to-heart!”

Kronya rolled her eyes. “Just shut up and run away, you sunshine-headed imbeciles! Let me enjoy this!” She kicked Solon a few more times and let out a laugh as giddy as it was wicked. “Bet you’re regretting turning me into a mouse _now!”_ She fished around in Solon’s robes and pulled out a canteen just like the one Cornelia had drunk from, and with a triumphant shout she ran away into the shadows.

“Ferdinand, Dimitri, go see to the Professor,” Edelgard said, gesturing over her shoulder to the area where Byleth had fallen. “Bernie, let’s go.”

Bernadetta nodded, gingerly rubbing her wrists where the twine had bitten too deeply and left welts on her skin. Dimitri and Ferdinand climbed the stairs to Seiros’ coffin. Edelgard took stock of the area. Solon was facedown in a pool of blood and (hopefully) dead; Cornelia, now returned to human form, was sprawled out unconscious on the stairs, her colossal body looming like a mountain range.

She looked to the little mote of faint light far in the distance, far out of the reach of the torches overhead that lit this small portion of the mausoleum. The mausoleum’s only entrance. It seemed so far away… and who would carry along everyone who’d fallen? She couldn’t just leave them here for Anselm to claim as prisoners.

The mound of rubble heaped over Anselm quivered, shuddered, and burst apart as he rose to his feet like a leviathan breaching the waves. Dust and fragments of stone trickled and rolled off his ragged fur and skin. In one upraised paw he held Petra’s unconscious body up like a trophy, letting her dangle from his grip like a fresh kill.

Edelgard grabbed Bernadetta and the two of them bolted, scurrying across the floor. To see Petra’s body, battered, bruised, bloody, in Anselm’s grasp was like a knife through her heart. She had always known she risked one day seeing her classmates—her comrades—her _friends—_ in such a state, but nothing had truly prepared her for that sight.

 _“Stop!”_ Anselm’s voice rang after them. _“Or she dies!”_

 _“Over your dead body!”_ A beam of searing blue-white light ripped through his chest, sending arcs of lightning across his towering body; flashes and flickers of cold light cut through the darkness and the sharp, acrid smell of lightning filled the air as bolts of lightning flew from Dorothea’s paws. Anselm reeled back, immediately relinquishing his new captive and letting Petra fall to the floor. _“Bern! Edie! Keep running!”_ Dorothea called out.

Edelgard and Bernadetta kept running, heading for the wavering partition between the torchlight illuminating Seiros’ tomb and the darkness engulfing the rest of the mausoleum. They passed by Linhardt and a groggy, yet awake Lysithea, who were combining their efforts and pooling their methods to rouse Hubert; Claude held an arrow nocked in his bow, prepared to do whatever he could to distract Anselm if he gave chase.

Another arc of lightning struck Anselm, setting alight little flames across his ragged black fur. He bounded after Edelgard on all fours anyway, shrugging off the blue arcs leaping over him, and let out a beastly roar. Lysithea drove a lance of black fire into his thigh, biting all the way to the bone; he ripped it free, and though one of his legs flopped unsteadily after him, he kept pursuing. Claude fired an arrow into his open mouth; somehow, the blunt wooden arrowhead lodged itself in the back of his throat and protruded like a second tongue until he rippled it free.

Edelgard felt her foot crack against a loose fragment of stone and fell to the floor, a hot and stinging pain blossoming in her ankle. Bernadetta cried out in panic and grabbed her by the shoulders and hoisted her back up. For someone so waifish, Edelgard thought, she had surprisingly strong arms. Then again, one couldn’t be an archer and _not_ have strong arms…

 _“Now die,”_ Anselm howled, closing in on them, splaying his paws to show off long, sharp claws, _“Edelgard! I shall rip your charade asunder!”_

Bernadetta threw herself between him and Edelgard. _“No!”_ Edelgard cried out. She couldn’t lose Bernie, not now, not here, not—

There was a flash of light. Bernadetta disappeared. Anselm’s claws met the blade of a sword.

Yuri spread his legs, lowered his stance, and dug in his heels as the force of Anselm’s blow bore down on him. _“You were expecting someone else?”_ he quipped. Though his back was to Edelgard, she could hear in his voice the smirk that was no doubt stretched across his face.

Another bolt of lightning struck Anselm, but this one didn’t come from Dorothea—it descended from the ceiling like divine judgment from the Goddess and struck him over the top of his head. Fragments of his bony helmet flew everywhere and what was left sloughed off his head and fell to the floor in chunks. He staggered backward, billowing smoke enveloping his head. Wretched moans wrenched themselves free from his mouth, and his tail lashed back and forth like a beheaded snake caught in its death throes.

A pair of leathery wings flapped in the air and a bat sailed out of the darkness. _“Lady Edelgard, my, my! Fancy running into_ you _here!”_ Constance drawled, tugging on her bat’s rein as her mount flitted overhead. Bernadetta was clutching her for dear life and staring nervously down at Anselm from her perch on the bat’s back.

Edelgard felt a rush of tingling warmth wash over her and the pain in her ankle fade; she looked up to find Balthus standing over her. “Hey there, Princess. How ya doin’?” he asked.

“What are you doing here?” she asked him, so dazed and surprised she could barely mumble her question to him.

“Chasing some asshole who stole a bunch of food from us,” Yuri said, “but _this_ is a hell of a lot more interesting. Alright, wolves, move out and get whoever’s injured to safety!”

Balthus helped Edelgard to her feet, using a double-headed battleaxe to support the both of them. “Weird to see you without a weapon, Highness. How’d you get yourself into this mess?”

Anselm’s perforated, rotting chest rose and fell, the organs visible through the holes throbbing languidly and letting loose rancid ichor that spilled onto his fur and skin. The stench was indescribable; Edelgard felt her stomach twist before the smell of rot even reached her nostrils. A blossom of lights traced itself across his ruined chest, forming an almost familiar shape. Edelgard squinted to better make it out. She could swear it resembled a Crest of Seiros with its leaf-like shape, but… parts of it resembled the weaving, butterfly-wing arcs of the Crest of Flames as well. As though, over the course of those accursed blood reconstruction experiments, the Agarthans had not applied a second Crest to Anselm’s body but rather somehow melded it to the major Crest he had been born with…

As the strange hybrid Crest glowed, Anselm’s visible organs throbbed with renewed vigor and the gaping holes in his body began to shrink. Skin and fur began to crawl across the exposed bone of his skull atop his head where Constance’s lightning had struck him. _“Edelgard…”_ he moaned, his fingers and tail twitching as he stepped backward on unsteady feet. _“Edelgard… Edelgard!”_

Edelgard grabbed Balthus’ axe. “Give me your axe, Balthus.”

“Ah-ah-ah! What’s the magic word?” he asked, tightening his grasp.

“Your future emperor has need of this,” she said, wrenching it out of his grasp. “Yuri, help the others—I’ll finish this.”

“I’m not even _from_ Adrestia…” Balthus mumbled as Edelgard pushed past Yuri.

“You want me?” Edelgard called out to the beast looming before her. The battleaxe was heavy in her paws, but its weight was comforting. She could face the Plague Rat holding it. She could face an army holding it. She could face anything holding it. “Come and take me if you dare, Ansy!”

The sound of his nickname seemed to spur him into action, and he pounced on her.

“Do not call me that!” he snarled, his claws ringing out against the axe’s steel blade. “Only _El_ may call me that! And El died! El died in the dungeons!”

She felt her own words thrown back at her. What she’d said to Dimitri before the assault on Mousehaven—that the girl he knew had died and she was what remained. Anselm believed it, too—believed it enough to want her dead.

But it was only a convenient way of thinking. Edelgard had lived, loath as she was sometimes to admit it. She had lived, demonstrating the senselessness of a godless world. She had lived, unworthy and undeserving.

And because she had lived then, she had to keep living now. A promise to the undeserving dead, from the undeserving living, that one day their deaths would _mean_ something, that one day their sacrifice would pave the path to a better world.

“As much as I wish I had,” she said, “I lived. I’m sorry, Anselm, but—”

“No! She died! Her _soul_ died! I _know_ it!” Anselm’s claws dug into her side. Edelgard felt a sharp pain graze her ribs and an unsettling warmth soak her fur.

 _“El!”_ Bernadetta cried out as she and Constance circled overhead.

Anselm growled and looked up at them. “And you mock her when you allow others to call you by that name!” His muscles tensed, his legs bowed, his ragged whiskers twitched as his attention turned to the bat circling overhead.

Edelgard took the opportunity to bury her axe in his side before he could leap after them. The wash of blood and ichor that spattered her was so repulsive she nearly vomited right then and there. But she wouldn’t let him target anyone else. He would fight her and nobody else. _“Fly, you fool!”_ she shouted out to Constance.

Anselm’s eyes flashed; Constance barely managed to pull her bat (which was, so it seemed, much more unruly than her trusty Bruce) out of his line of sight before another blossom of fire bloomed in the ceiling and another shower of debris fell to the floor.

“Anselm, stop!” Edelgard wrenched her axe free and leaped backward, trying to draw him along. “Or do you want me to slip through your clutches again?”

With a great and terrible roar of agony and rage, he gave chase once more, scurrying across the floor on all fours. His speed, let alone strength, was incredible. Edelgard found herself beaten back by his onslaught. She lost her footing and stumbled backward, barely managing to keep him at a distance with a swing of her axe. She had to keep him talking—keep him occupied long enough that the Ashen Wolves and her own classmates could make a retreat. A distracted Anselm, one focused solely on her—

It was almost funny. She’d once known in her heart that she would be willing to sacrifice anybody if that was the price she had to pay for her new world. Now she was putting herself in mortal peril for the sake of those same people she’d once reluctantly considered both friends and potential pawns. She couldn’t help but let out a bitter smile at how utterly her fortunes had changed in not even two weeks.

The two of them circled around each other, over and over again, Edelgard parrying the blows from Anselm’s wicked claws and nipping his flank with her axe when she could. Anselm circled around to where he’d dropped his knives—Edelgard cursed her foolishness; he’d obviously pushed her over here on purpose—and grabbed one of them, swinging the massive serrated blade with reckless abandon. The force of steel ringing against steel quickly began to numb Edelgard’s paws, rattling her bones all the way up to her shoulders.

“You mock her! You disgrace her!” Anselm bellowed at her, spit and ichor flying from his mouth. Flecks of his own blood smoked and sizzled on the pale golden orbs that sat in his eye sockets in lieu of real eyes. “Your very existence is an affront to her—to _me!_ To _us!_ To our _father!”_

His eyes lit up again; Edelgard leaped to the side to avoid the plume of flames that erupted from the floor where she’d been standing and landed unsteadily, barely managing to keep her axe from flying out of her paws. His knife fell over her, its steel blade gleaming in the torchlight. She lifted her axe and felt her elbow buckle under the force of the blow.

She pulled herself upright and pushed his blade away, scraping the edge of her axe against the scalloped serration of his knife and darted back. “You slither in the dark and yet _my_ existence disgusts you?”

“You’re nothing but a shadow—a shell! Do you even _remember_ me, Edelgard? Truly?” Anselm spat back at her.

Edelgard slipped.

She did, but _barely._ Almost everything was locked behind her restless dreams. What she could recall was vague. She remembered that he was not always kind to her, but never _cruel—_ but not how. She remembered that he’d looked after her, that he’d been overbearing at times, irritating even, but the details eluded her. She barely remembered his voice, let alone his face. Only in dreams… and dreams faded.

The momentary lapse in her concentration was enough for his blade to taste her flesh. The next thing she knew, she couldn’t feel her left arm. She stumbled backward in a daze, feeling warm blood drench her shoulder. Her battleaxe hung heavily from her right paw.

Anselm grinned and raised his bloodied blade again. “I knew it. There’s nothing inside you, Edelgard, nothing of El, not anymore, and you’ve papered over that emptiness with anything you could steal from the others!”

Edelgard hastily dodged his next strike, her left arm flapping uselessly behind her, dragging her axe behind her. A rational part of her brain told her to drop it so it wouldn’t weigh her down, but she couldn’t bear the thought of being without a weapon.

He struck again and again. “Burkhart’s strength, Justine’s fearlessness, Joachim’s selflessness, even _my_ willpower—but inside, there is _nothing!_ You lived, but your soul died! You committed yourself to evil acts that El would _never_ do! But _I… I_ died, but my _soul_ lived!”

At last, her legs gave out and she collapsed, panting, gasping for breath, the muscles in her legs burning from strain.

She saw Anselm’s bloodstained blade rise up and swing back down.

It seemed to happen so slowly.

She watched the blade fall closer, closer, so slowly that it almost seemed that when it finally reached her, it would touch her as lightly and gently as a feather.

A fiery arc whipped through the air. Anselm reeled back. His knife went flying—with his paw still gripping it. He clutched at the bleeding stump of his forearm, snarling and squealing in pain. Before Edelgard could process what she’d just seen, a golden blur careened into the side of Anselm’s head and knocked him to the floor.

Dimitri rose to his feet and dusted himself off, standing between Anselm and Edelgard and gripping his blunt training spear with such confidence that it was as if he really thought he could kill someone with it. “I’ve never heard such projection,” he spat. “You slaughter everything in your path for pleasure. What kind of a soul rests within that living corpse you cling to? Are you _proud_ of such deeds?” His grip on the haft of his spear grew tight enough to splinter the wood.

He looked over his shoulder. “Can you stand, El?” he asked her.

Hearing that name come from his mouth was like being doused with a bucket of ice water. Edelgard dug her axe into the floor and pushed herself upright. “Dimitri…” she gasped. Each breath felt like a sharp knife was being driven between her ribs.

“You…” Anselm snarled. “You called her ‘El’… Who are _you_ to do such a thing?”

Dimitri raised his spear and leveled its blunt edge at him. “I’m her stepbrother.”

Anselm began to laugh. “Yes? And where were _you_ when the rest of us were dying in a dungeon?”

“I suffered my own trials.” Dimitri slipped into a combat stance. “Right now, the ghosts of those I’ve lost are screaming at me! El, get up! We’ll finish him together!”

Edelgard readied her axe. Was this her second wind? Or her third? Either way, the fatigue was draining from her body; she could feel her blood burning in her veins.

Drool and ichor spilling from his maw, Anselm threw back his paw, raking his claws through the air—only for the segmented blade of the Sword of the Creator to wrap around his wrist and yank his arm backward, twisting his shoulder. He reached out haplessly with the stump of his severed forearm as Dimitri charged forward and shoved his spear against his jaw hard enough to pierce the flesh and bury the wooden spearhead in the roof of his mouth.

Anselm snapped the spear like a twig to rip himself free and bounded toward Edelgard, baring his fangs and roaring. Edelgard fit her axe between his jaws and pushed him back, digging in her heels. Her claws scraped against the stone floor.

“‘Your soul lived?’” she asked him, pushing the axe forward, struggling to break past the vice grip of his jaw. “Is _that_ what you tell yourself? What ideals do you fight for? What motivates you? Do you simply do your masters’ bidding without question, or is there a heart within your husk?”

Anselm let out a wordless roar as he struggled to close his mouth.

“The Anselm I knew hated Arundel and everyone responsible for our lot. Now you eagerly do the bidding of those who slither in the dark! Answer me! What do you have of him but his rage? What have you stolen to paper over your own emptiness?”

Anselm’s eyes lit up, preparing to let loose an explosive blast; at just the right moment, though, an arrow from Claude’s bow collided with the side of his forehead, jerking his head to the side. Another explosion rocked the mausoleum’s wall.

“The _real_ Anselm would stand by my side, not in my way. You’re a disgrace to his memory! Now live on and defile him further—” Edelgard ripped the blade from his mouth and pushed herself forward, summoning all of her strength into one final swing of her axe. _“—Or let me cut you down!”_

She felt the axe’s edge slip through skin, parting flesh, cleaving bone; she staggered from the force of her own blow and lost her grip on the battleaxe. The weapon’s wooden haft slipped from her blistered and bleeding palm and flew to the floor.

And behind her, Anselm crumpled to the floor in two pieces.

Byleth descended the stairs, snapping her segmented blade back into place with a flick of her wrist. “Good work, students,” she said. “Top marks for all of you.”

Claude lowered his bow and grinned. “Thanks a ton, Teach.”

“You barely did anything,” Dimitri said to him.

 _“Did_ I?”

Ferdinand followed Byleth down, wearing his usual ear-to-ear naive grin. “Amazing work, Lady Edelgard! I fear even _I_ could not have laid such a momentous finishing blow on that fiend!”

Edelgard looked over Anselm’s bisected body. She couldn’t bear to get close; the odor from the growing pool of ichor surrounding him was truly noxious. He was still and silent now; whatever power of his strange Crest allowed him to repair the damage to his body wasn’t working anymore. Perhaps he was dead.

Edelgard fell to her knees. Her breath caught in her throat. A veil of tears blurred the shape of the Plague Rat. The last of her siblings was truly dead.

Once again, she was alone.

Byleth knelt at her side. Edelgard felt her paw press against her injured left shoulder, and the sharp and white-hot pain of her touch gave way to the blissful, soothing warmth of healing magic knitting her shredded muscles and sinew back together. “Are you alright?”

“No, not anymore.” Edelgard shook her head. “I can feel my left arm, too, now.”

While Dimitri and Claude snickered and Byleth groaned and rolled her eyes (but in a strangely affectionate way), Ferdinand blanched. “Oh, no, Lady Edelgard! Are you delirious? Are you dying?” he cried out, rushing to Edelgard’s side. “In Hubert’s absence, I shall carry you myself to Professor Manuela—Oh, and you are crying! Is the pain that severe?”

Edelgard shook her head and wiped her tears on her paw. “I-I’m fine, Ferdinand,” she choked. “Let’s… just get v-very… very far away from here.” She lifted her head, her eyes cleared. It looked like everyone save for the small group still here had fled, thanks to the sudden appearance of Yuri and his wolves. Anselm’s body lay on the floor, rotting. The colossal shape of Cornelia’s very large, very human, and (Edelgard had only just realized) very nude body remained sprawled over the stairs, looming over everyone like a fleshy mountain range.

Ferdinand followed her gaze and instantly put a paw over his eyes.

“Why don’t we get out of here,” Claude suggested, “before Cornelia wakes up? I’m not in the mood to fight a giant naked woman right now.”

Dimitri, also averting his eyes, shook his head. “I do not think I will ever be in that mood.”

Together, Byleth and Ferdinand helped Edelgard to her feet, and the three of them headed for the mausoleum’s entrance behind Claude and Dimitri. Edelgard felt her spirits lift. She was going to see Bernadetta again, and if nothing else, that fact lightened the dense, weighty sorrow resting in her chest.

Everything would be okay. Her friends were all safe. The nightmare was over.

“Wait a minute,” Ferdinand said. “Where is Solon?”

“At the foot of the stairs,” Claude said, looking over his shoulder, “right… where… Kronya… stabbed him…” His voice grew smaller with every word.

Everyone turned to follow his troubled eyes and saw Solon, very much alive, his pallid and hairless skin and ragged robes drenched in blood and ichor, dragging Anselm’s upper half upright.

 _“You… mustn’t abandon this body…”_ Solon gasped, his pained voice echoing in the empty mausoleum. _“Anselm! You and I are to be the saviors of Fódlan!”_ He reached into his robes—there was a horrible sound of tearing and squelching flesh—and withdrew a dripping, gleaming orb that caught the flickering torchlight and glittered with a bloody inner light. _“Cling to this form, my Plague Rat, until your new body lies dead at your feet!”_ he snarled, driving the stone orb deep within Anselm’s rotting chest.

Visions of the mission Edelgard and her class had taken months ago flashed before her eyes. Conand Tower, where a team of bandits led by Miklan Gautier had holed up with a stolen Hero’s Relic, the Lance of Ruin. In the dark confines of that long-abandoned fortress, the Black Eagles under Byleth’s command had fought past waves of the thieves and murderers and rapists until they had cornered Miklan himself. With no other options, Miklan had attempted to wield the Lance of Ruin himself, and to the horror of his brother Sylvain, who had accompanied the Eagles that day, the relic’s Crest Stone had sensed his unworthiness and rejected him. Black tendrils had sprung up from the glowing red orb embedded in the lance’s spearhead, crawling up his arm and subsuming his entire body, muffling and eventually quieting his screams. Miklan had died and in his place had risen a mindless monster.

But here, that fragment of a Crest Stone ripped from Solon’s chest sensed Anselm’s hybrid Crest, sensed his power, and granted him _more._

Black tendrils erupted from his chest, engulfing him and Solon alike, and knitted themselves into a grotesque and towering form.

It stood, thin and lanky, emaciated to the point of nearly being skeletal, but filled with sizzling tension in every inch of its tautly-drawn muscles. Claws sprouted from long, spindly fingers. Jagged spikes erupted from broad shoulders and long, spindly arms, crowning it with armor. Two pairs of vast wings sprouted from its back, eaglelike but with chitinous scales for feathers, furling and unfurling first in sequence, then in unison.

Exposed ribs, sharp as knives, curved over naked striations of black muscle tissue and caged a cavernous hollow in its chest, and in that hollow where its heart and lungs would have been was a squirming mass of squealing and slavering rat’s heads and forelegs half-embedded in its flesh and clawing at their bony cage.

A stark white rat’s skull crowned its form, black tendons and sinews clinging to the naked bone, and curved horns curled outward from its forehead; a long mane of white hair poured from its fleshless scalp down to the floor like a waterfall. Nine bony tails writhed behind it, lashing to and fro like living whips. Long black talons sprouting from scaly feet dug into the stone floor. Patches of chitinous black armor, glossy and scaly, clung to its flesh and black sludge dripped from its exposed muscles.

The beast lifted its skeletal head, and embedded in the hollow of its throat was a pale human face—a child’s face—with jet-black eyes. The beast took hesitant steps on its splayed, eaglelike talons, furling its wings over its shoulders and wearing them like a cloak, clasping and unclasping its fists and marveling at its new body. It stood at twice the height of the Plague Rat, easily a full foot tall from tip to toe.

“I shall, Solon,” he spoke. It was Anselm’s voice, and it came from the face in the hollow of his throat— _his_ face as Edelgard had remembered it, gaunt and pale, with hollow cheeks and sunken eyes and lips so chapped they bled. “I shall wear this husk until Edelgard lies dead at my feet, and together, with your knowledge in my body, we shall create the perfect emperor. The world shall greet us as liberators.”

“Don’t worry, guys,” Claude said, his whiskers trembling as much as his voice was. “I’ve got one last idea.”

“Will you step forth and defy me _now,_ Edelgard?” Anselm boasted, spreading out his wings and his arms in a mockery of a welcome embrace. “Come on! Lift your battleaxe! Spit your rhetoric! Take up arms against your own flesh and blood if you dare!” He let out a ringing laugh.

“Alright, what’s your plan now?” Dimitri asked Claude.

“My best one yet.” Claude turned tail and ran. _“Run away!”_

They all ran. Edelgard threw aside her heavy axe and dropped to all fours, scampering as fast as she could across the stone floor, fixated on the dim pinprick of light in the darkness. Her palms stung with every impact against the cold stone tiles, her lungs aching with every breath.

A bone-chilling screech split the air, ringing in her ears, and Edelgard felt spindly claws as sharp as knives curl around her waist.

* * *

Constance’s bat lighted on the ground in front of the Holy Mausoleum, fluttering its wings as she wrestled with its reins. “Bruce Two, I beg of you—oh, I know I am not worthy of your good behavior,” she mumbled, oddly subdued, “but if you would deign to behave…”

“He’s young and feisty, Coco,” Hapi muttered as she helped Constance and Bernadetta dismount the beast. “You’ll just have to get used to it. Oh, hey, Bern. The hell are _you_ doing here?”

Bernadetta found her footing on the cobblestones. “Uh… I-I dunno? What’s wrong with Constance?”

“Oh, she gets like that in the sunlight,” Hapi said. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Just as my deservedly poor luck would have it, our little hunt has turned into a rescue mission,” Constance told her as Yuri and Balthus pulled themselves free of the gap between the mausoleum’s door and its wall. Balthus had Caspar’s limp and unconscious body slung over his shoulder. Dorothea followed him out, holding Petra close to her side, and Linhardt and Lysithea half-carried, half-dragged Hubert between them.

Linhardt unceremoniously dropped a barely-conscious Hubert onto the ground like a sack of flour. “I think that’s enough hard labor for today,” he gasped, swaying on his feet.

Hubert looked up and scowled at him. “This has been happening far too often for my liking,” he grumbled, picking himself up.

Dorothea laid Petra down and took stock of her injuries. “Hang in there, Petra…” she nervously muttered, a weak healing light fluttering around her paws.

“Where’s Edelgard?” Bernadetta muttered weakly, barely managing to choke the words out.

“She’ll be fine,” Linhardt assured her. “The Professor’s still with her.”

Yuri took command. “Constance, take Damien—”

“His name is Bruce Two,” Constance interjected with none of her usual authority.

“Take Bruce Two and find that Jeralt guy. Tell him we’re at the cathedral and we need a good healer. Also there’s a naked woman lying in the mausoleum who shouldn’t be there.”

“Yes, I shall do my best. Please forgive me in advance should I fail,” Constance said with a halfhearted salute, and with a flap of Bruce Two’s wings, she was off.

Bernadetta watched it all play out as though it was a dream. Nothing, not even the stone beneath her feet, felt fully real. It was like she was floating. All of her classmates were here in front of her, all either clinging to consciousness or clinging to life, and all because of _her._ And they’d all left Edelgard behind for _her._

 _“Bern,”_ Dorothea gasped, grabbing her by the wrist, _“are you okay?_

She caught her breath. “Y-Yeah…”

Dorothea dragged her to the ground. She was haggard, her eyes tired, her fur ragged and singed. “Sit here so I can keep an eye on you and Petra. Are you—did they hurt you, Bern?”

“I’m fine.” She shook her head. “I’m fine, they didn’t—El, Professor, Ferdinand, where are—Why did you come for me?” She couldn’t breathe. Her chest heaved, but she couldn’t breathe. “Why did you come after me?”

Dorothea cradled her in her arms, running her paws through her fur. “We had to. I’m sorry.”

“It was a trap. You all should’ve known that… Why?” Bernadetta asked her, gasping for breath.

“We’re your friends. We had to. You know how much you mean to us—to Edie—she insisted…” Dorothea’s fingers trembled as they hooked themselves into her tangled hair. “Breathe, Bernie. Just breathe. It’ll be okay.”

Bernadetta nodded and wiped at her eyes. “Is… Is Dedue… o-okay?” She felt horrible—she hadn’t even thought about him since she’d woken up, she’d been so worried about herself and Edelgard. She was so self-centered…

“He’s okay.”

“And El…”

“Just have faith. She’s got the Professor on her side, and Claude and Dimitri, so…”

Bernadetta felt a cold void form in her heart. If Edelgard died in there while she herself was out here safe and sound, how could she live with herself? What kind of guilt would she carry, knowing that the most powerful girl in the Empire had given her life to save the worthless, useless daughter of a corrupt nobleman?

She rested her head on Dorothea’s shoulder and tried to calm down, forcing herself to take deep, regular breaths. Edelgard was going to come out alive. She just had to have faith in her. Everything was going to work out.

An explosion rocked the Holy Mausoleum, shaking the ground. A blossom of black fire and plume of debris erupted from the roof into the brightening violet sky. In its wake, a grotesque, winged silhouette leaped into the air.

“What the fuck is that?” Yuri asked, squinting to make out the twisted shape traced against the growing dawn light.

Dimitri and Ferdinand pushed their way out of the mausoleum, both of them supporting Byleth’s weight as she stumbled between them. Her hair and fur was matted with blood, her eyes hooded and dazed, her blood-spattered sword dangling from her loose grip and dragging on the ground. And Edelgard wasn’t with her.

Hubert leaped to his feet. “What happened? Where is—”

“That monster flew off with her,” Ferdinand moaned. “I—I do not know what to do; I’m… I am so, so sorry, Hubert…”

He looked up at the dawn sky, whirling around to keep his eyes fixed on the black shadow flying above them. “No…” His voice cracked. _“No…”_

Claude dragged himself out of the mausoleum, favoring a twisted and bloodstained leg that dangled limp and uselessly behind him, and crumpled to the ground. “There’s got to be… something we can do, Teach…”

“El…” Bernadetta felt the pit in her stomach open wide enough to swallow her whole. She felt as empty inside and fragile as a delicate glass sculpture. Edelgard had really done it. She’d thrown her life away. Had she really been that miserable? Had she really held such little hope that things could have been better? If only she’d noticed, Bernadetta lamented to herself, if only she’d been more caring, a better friend, a better left wing, maybe she would have known sooner how badly Edelgard had wanted to die. She cursed herself, cursed her selfishness and inattentiveness.

 _“El,”_ she wailed, breaking down in tears, _“I’m so sorry…”_

The next thing she knew, she was being roughly seized by the shoulders. _“Bernadetta!”_ Hubert snarled at her. _“Calm yourself! This is no time for tears!”_

Dorothea pulled him away from her. “Get away from her! What’s gotten into you? She’s just been a _hostage!”_

_“You are her left wing! Will you sit there bawling like a child, or will you—”_

There was a sharp crack as she slapped Hubert across the cheek. _“Hubert, you asshole!”_

Hubert winced and rubbed his cheek. “Lady Edelgard needs us. She needs—”

“What are you expecting to do?” Dorothea retorted. “What do you want from Bernie? Edie’s probably already _d—”_

“She needs her wings!” Hubert took a stunned step back, as though shocked by his own words. “She needs her…” He turned to Hapi. “You. The beast-tamer.”

“I’ve got a name, Bert,” Hapi protested. “And it’s not that simple.”

“Don’t call me Bert.”

“Whatever you say, Bertman.”

“Bert is fine.” Hubert let out a frustrated sigh. “Can you summon pigeons?”

“What?”

“Pigeons. Rats with wings. The cathedral is lousy with them. Can you summon pigeons?”

“It’s really not a pick-and-choose thing—”

“Can you _try?”_

Hapi gave him a concerned, somewhat frightened look. Hubert’s intensity had that effect on people. “Have you ever flown before?”

“Irrelevant. Summon the pigeons. Bernadetta, have _you_ ever flown before?”

“Uh… I-I’ve had some practice… o-once or twice,” Bernadetta stammered. “But—But you wouldn’t want Bernie; who else is good at flying? Petra’s had some practice…”

She looked down at Petra, who cracked open her eyes, mumbled, _“Did we get the victory?”_ in a very weak voice, and promptly dropped back out of consciousness.

Petra was a no-go. “Um… Claude?” she suggested. “I’ve seen you on a wyvern…”

“With _this_ leg?” Claude asked, gesturing to his injury. Bernadetta blanched—she’d never seen a leg bend that way.

“Okay. But all we have are wooden arrows—” Bernadetta protested.

“Then wooden arrows shall have to do,” Hubert answered. “Aim for its eyes or genitals, assuming it _has_ any.”

Hapi sighed and rolled her eyes. “Alright, Bert. Here goes. Two pigeons coming up if we’re lucky, ravenous crows coming up if we’re not.”

“If you summon ravenous crows here,” Yuri warned her, “I’m killing you first.”

“This is insane,” Dorothea said, grabbing Bernadetta protectively. “Hubert, neither you nor Bern have even the _slightest_ experience with flying!”

“We are the wings of the hegemon; Lady Edelgard trusts us to be at her side,” Hubert retorted. “Don’t you agree, Bernadetta?”

Dorothea gave her a pat on the back. _“You don’t have to do this,”_ she whispered.

Bernadetta shook her head. No, Hubert was right. Edelgard needed her. And she owed this to her.

There was a flutter of wings and two plump pigeons with beady eyes and mottled gray plumage touched down on the ground, irritably flapping their wings and puffing out their feathers. Hapi lifted her paws and mumbled soothing words to them, then reached into a satchel at her side and tossed out a few breadcrumbs for them to peck at, and miraculously, they calmed down.

“Alright, crash course in flying,” she said to Bernadetta and Hubert as she tended to the pigeons, “step one, let the bird do all the work, step two, nudge it in the side with your knees or heels if you don’t like where it’s going, step three, don’t make it angry.”

“But what if kicking it makes it angry—” Bernadetta began to say, but Balthus had already grabbed her and hoisted her onto one of the pigeon’s backs. She lost her train of thought when she noticed the smattering of iridescent feathers hidden in the gray plumage of her slightly-willing mount’s neck. She’d never realized how pretty pigeons were.

The pigeon bobbed its head and cooed, then twisted its neck to look at her with beady orange eyes that somehow managed to look suspicious. “I’ll be gentle,” Bernadetta assured it.

“You’ll figure out a happy medium,” Hapi assured her, handing her Petra’s wooden bow and quiver of wooden arrows. “Just don’t be too rough with it. Bert, getting comfy over there?”

Hubert clung to his mount’s neck, trembling like a leaf. “Yes,” he rasped.

“Because I can fly it instead—”

“No. I have pledged my service to Lady Edelgard. I will do this.” He very gently eased himself into a more germane riding position, holding tufts of the pigeon’s plumage in his fists. “I… I will do this. For Lady Edelgard. I shall be her right wing. Literally.”

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Linhardt asked. “Also, you shouldn’t grip its feathers like that. You’ll pull them out and make it angry. Besides, you’ll need your paws free for casting spells.”

Hubert sheepishly let go of the pigeon’s neck. “Yes. I am fine. Thank you, Linhardt,” he said, not sounding thankful in the slightest. “Bernadetta, are you ready?”

“Um…”

“Good, we’re both equally ready.” He kicked the bird’s flanks. “Fly, you disgusting beast!”

Bernadetta dug her heels into her own bird’s sides. “Fly, um… please?”

Both birds spread their wings, and the next thing Bernadetta knew, she was clinging to her pigeon’s neck for dear life and the only sound she could hear was rushing wind mingled with Hubert’s terrified screams.

She sucked down as much of the rushing wind as she could into her aching lungs as she struggled to pull her mount into a more purposeful flight path. The sun was a ruddy orange blob bleeding over the horizon, and the violet sky had begun to lighten; orange highlights traced the wispy clouds hanging high above. Amber morning light struck the silhouettes of the monastery’s walls and rooftops. She would have enjoyed the sight if it all wasn’t swirling around her like a whirlpool. This was more terrifying than the first—and last—time she’d ever ridden on a pegasus. She desperately hoped that at least Hubert was doing better than her—

As soon as her bird leveled out and began to trace a gentle arc over the ravine that separated the cathedral from the rest of the monastery (if it had seemed like an abyssal drop to her when she was _human,_ it was even more terrifying as a mouse riding a bird), she scanned the air for Hubert. She found him clinging to his bird for dear life, eyes wide, trembling like a leaf.

“A-Are you okay?” she called out to him as she nudged her bird into gliding beside his.

“Yes, I am fine,” he said, very much obviously _not_ fine. “I’ve… always wanted to be a Pegasus Knight, actually.”

“Can’t only women ride pegasi?”

“I am aware of that,” Hubert grumbled through gritted teeth. He looked around for any sign of the black beast that had taken off with Edelgard in its talons. “There! Follow me!” He kicked his bird in the sides. “That way!”

The bird took off in the wrong direction.

 _“I said_ that _way!”_

Despite every part of her telling her not to look down at the dark, fog-shrouded abyss beneath her, Bernadetta looked down, and before the vertigo became too much to bear, she caught sight of someone standing on the bridge and got an idea.

 _Please, El,_ she prayed as she swooped down in front of Mercedes, _please hold on just a little longer!_

* * *

Edelgard clung to Anselm’s talons for dear life, although whether she remained in his clutches or not had nothing to do with her own desires. She was at his mercy; she had to admit, she had no idea why he hadn’t dropped her yet. If he only needed her corpse, then letting go of her from this height would certainly give him that.

Was he saving her for something? Bringing her _to_ someone or somewhere? Or was he simply being sadistic?

Anselm let out a sinister chuckle. “So, Edelgard, care to tell me again about those _noble ambitions_ of yours?”

Edelgard squeezed her eyes shut and braced herself against the bitter cold wind that buffeted her. She was freezing from the tip of her tail to the tips of her ears. Her hair whipped around her head, strands sticking in her mouth with every breath she took. “I’d rather not waste my breath.”

“Really?” Anselm tucked his wings to his sides and dropped like a stone; Edelgard let out an involuntary scream as gravity wrenched her downward and the grounds of the Officer’s Academy rushed up to meet her. And then with an abrupt jolt that nearly shook her right out of his grasp, he unfurled his wings again and let the breeze carry him back up.

Edelgard caught her breath. She wouldn’t say she was as terrified of heights as, say, Hubert was, but not even she particularly enjoyed the prospect of plummeting to her death. Each lungful of air she sucked down against the wind stung like a knife in her side.

“That seemed like a particular waste of breath to me,” Anselm said. “So, tell me, what _ideals_ do you fight for? What _motivates_ you?”

“If you’re going to splatter me against the ground, then do it and put us both out of our misery.”

“No, no, tell me what makes you get up in the morning.” He plummeted again, wrenching another scream out of her before pulling back upward. “Tell me what makes life feel worth living.” The same maneuver again; Edelgard had barely recovered her breath from the last one, and now she was feeling dizzy and lightheaded. “Tell me what your purpose is, so that I might know what I’ve taken from you!”

“How exactly do you plan,” she gasped, panting for breath as her chest heaved shallowly, “to resurrect my body once you’ve planted your soul in it? Solon is dead. I take it _he_ was the magical specialist among you.”

“His knowledge rests in me now.”

“Ah. I see.” Edelgard had no idea if he was telling the truth, bluffing, or just delusional.

“I don’t actually _need_ you dead, by the way. Dead just means your soul won’t be around to put up a fight against mine when I plant it in your body. And so dead is easier, of course, even if it requires… excessive reconstructive efforts and burdensome resources.”

“Would it be easier for you if you broke my will first, then?”

“Of course.”

“So I don’t have to fear you killing me.”

Anselm dropped again. Edelgard screamed and held onto his wicked talons as tightly as she could.

He chuckled. “Perhaps.”

Edelgard craned her neck and looked upward, her stomach churning at the sight of the rats squealing and clawing at the inside of his ribcage. She looked up into the shadowed contours of Anselm’s face, barely lit by the morning sunbeams filtering through the air. “Please, then,” she said, “just drop me. I’ve had enough. There’s no point in going on. I have no further will to live. At least if I let you take me, I can yet see our mutual goal achieved. We can at least destroy Seiros together, as brother and sister.”

“You’ve lost the will to live?” Anselm inquired, cocking his head like an inquisitive dog.

“Yes. Please, end this charade. The thought of spending even another day in this hideous shape, consigned to sleeping in a dollhouse and nibbling on scraps from my human peers’ breakfasts, with no hope of ever returning to my former glory… disgusts me.” She pretended to swallow a lump in her throat. “I want to die.”

Anselm’s talons unfurled around her. She felt her stomach fall before the rest of her did and hastily wrapped her arms around his ankle with all her might, letting out a very un-princess-like yelp. At the sight of the ground rushing up to meet her, it was all too easy to forget herself.

He laughed again. “Remember Joachim, Edelgard? He’d wanted to die too, so that all of us would be spared—hoping that Thales and his peers would let us go if they got what they wanted from him. Rest assured, Edelgard, I will not spare your friends once you’ve given me what you want. I think, when I become emperor, I’ll contrive a reason to have them all executed. It won’t be hard. Half of them are brats of the same nobles who instigated that coup against our father. Some of them are commoner scum who dare to raise their voices to you as though they were speaking to _equals…_ and your best friends, it seems, are conspirators in a plot to murder the Archbishop.”

Edelgard clung grimly to his ankle. He wasn’t just trying to get a rise out of her—he meant every word he said. The last time she’d felt this powerless, she’d been in chains. Was this how all of her struggles would end? At the mercy of a sadistic monster that wore her brother’s face as a mask?

“How do you think Hubert will feel when you reward his lifetime of service with a trip to the gallows? Does it break your heart to picture the shock and betrayal he will wear in his ugly yellow eyes? Or how will Bernadetta feel when I—or, rather, _you_ —have her dragged in front of your throne with an axe to her neck? Do you think she will cry and beg for mercy? Do you think snot will dribble from her nose as she pleads with you, begging you to tell her whatever she must have done to displease you so?”

“You wouldn’t fool them,” Edelgard insisted. “Hubert and Bernadetta know me better than anyone.”

“But I’m your _brother._ Who knows you better than _me?”_

“I say things to them that even _you_ wouldn’t know I was capable of saying.”

“What? Like ‘I love you?’”

Edelgard gasped and clutched his ankle ever tighter.

“You’re so predictable,” Anselm drawled, chuckling. “Always were, little El. When I see your precious left-hand woman and right-hand man, I will tell them how deeply and dearly I love them and they will be utterly taken in. Everything else will be easy enough to fake… after all, I’ve been watching you for these past seven years _most_ intensely.”

“Dammit,” Edelgard swore. She let out a forlorn sigh. “You’re right. There’s nothing about me you don’t know. My resistance, as it always was…” She tried very hard to make her voice crack on command. If she got out of this alive, she’d ask Dorothea for acting lessons so she could do this better in the future, should she ever need to. “…It was f-futile.”

“Then let go.” Anselm’s voice took a soft turn. “Rest assured, I will find your mangled body. And the falling… it won’t be so bad. You’ll black out before you hit the ground. It will be like falling asleep.”

“Really?” Edelgard wished she could cry, but any tears she might have shed would have been swallowed by the cold, cruel wind anyway.

“Really. I know. I’ve fallen to my death a few times before. It’s painless.”

Edelgard looked down at the dizzying sight of the courtyard swirling gently below her as Anselm circled the Officer’s Academy grounds. She watched the monastery’s bell tower pass her by.

And then, in the brightening dawn light, she saw something to her left, flying on gray wings across the air.

And then she saw something to her right.

And she felt her spirits lift.

“Let go, El,” Anselm said, his whisper nearly lost on the wind. “You can join our brothers and sisters. Burkhart and Gerlinde, Justine, Immanuel, Joachim, Dagmar and Heidemarie, Pascal and Hedwig… they’re all waiting for you in the Goddess’ embrace.”

“I don’t believe in the Goddess.”

“Well… you’ll find peace, nonetheless. Just like them. And if you go quietly, I’ll spare your friends. I’ll exile them all to Almyra or somewhere far away from Fódlan and they’ll all live long, happy lives without you—far away from the Agarthans’ plots.”

Edelgard looked up at Anselm. “Ansy… I always _was_ a mouse, wasn’t I?” she asked. “I just did a good job pretending I was an eagle.”

Anselm nodded. The cracked lips of his ghoulish face twisted into a macabre smile. “You always _were,_ El. Me, Burkhart, and Joachim… you were our little mouse.”

“But you… _you’re_ a true eagle.”

“Don’t despair, El. When you’ve given your body to me, I’ll make sure you don’t have to pretend.”

Edelgard smiled back at him and loosened her grip on his ankle. “But… even a mouse can fly… as long as she has her wings!”

A volley of spears forged from the blackest hellfire ripped through Anselm’s wings, sending him careening off-course; he let out an anguished, enraged screech as Edelgard let go and let her body tumble through the air.

The next thing she knew, she had a face full of feathers, and Bernadetta’s strong arm was wrapped around her waist.

 _“I did it!”_ Bernadetta crowed, half-laughing in amazement. “El, did you see that? _I did it!”_

 _“See_ it?” Edelgard gasped, catching her breath as she clung to Bernadetta’s back. “I _survived_ it!” She pressed herself closer to Bernadetta, her heaving chest matching the beat of her frantic pulse. “Is… this a _pigeon?”_

“Yeah! How am I doing?”

“Better than me!” Edelgard couldn’t help but grin in sheer elation. “And the other one…”

She looked up and saw Anselm rising on rapidly-regenerating wings, weaving around volley after volley of dark magic and returning a stream of searing violet fire. The other rider narrowly pitched out of the way of the flames, retaliating with a swarm of black and violet motes of light that struck Anselm’s scaled hide and sizzled.

 _The other rider…_ Edelgard gasped. _“Hubert!”_ she called out. What was _he_ doing here? He was terrified of heights!

Anselm swooped around and doubled back to Bernadetta and Edelgard; with a kick of her feet, Bernadetta pushed her pigeon into a dive. Edelgard clutched Bernadetta by the waist as tightly as she could and buried her face in her shoulder as Anselm passed by overhead; the tip of one of his lashing bony tails grazed her head and cut a stinging gash in one of her ears.

 _“Edelgard!”_ Anselm roared. _“Get back here, you sniveling rodent!”_

 _“You always were predictable, Ansy,”_ Edelgard shouted over the rushing wind. _“I can even predict the words on the tip of your tongue—‘Did you have this all planned out from the start?’”_

_“Did you h—Bah! Insolent little husk! What will it take to break your spirit?”_

The two mounted fliers circled Anselm, their paths through the air unruly and unsteady; but they were just as unaccustomed to riding pigeons as Anselm was to having wings. Hubert kept the pressure on Anselm, throwing every offensive spell in his disposal at the beast, miring him in clouds of miasma and scorching his hide with dark fire.

Bernadetta readied her bow and drew a gleaming sewing needle from her quiver. Gleaming golden thread was looped through the needle’s eye. “Um, E-El, can you hold onto the end of this thread,” she asked, “a-and tie it to another needle? P-Please? I-I have an idea!”

Edelgard nodded, pressed her knees into the pigeon’s flank to keep herself steady, and took another needle from Bernadetta’s quiver, fumbling with the end of a long length of thread that had been spooled at the bottom. It was slick, as though it had been waxed. Though the cold bit her fingers, she managed to tie the thread into the needle’s eye. “Got it!”

“Okay, now hold on!” Bernadetta cried out, taking aim and firing. The needle lodged itself between a gap in Anselm’s scales, digging deep into the muscle of the joint between his shoulderblade and one of his wings. She pulled her pigeon into a wide loop, spiraling inward, drawing the thread around Anselm’s four wings again and again, tighter and tighter. Edelgard held onto her needle with all her might, though it felt as though her arms were being ripped from her sockets. She had to rely on both her Crests just to keep a grip on it.

With his wings bound, Anselm began to lose altitude, plummeting like a stone. _“Now give me the needle!”_ Bernadetta shouted, and as soon as Edelgard handed it to her, she nocked it and fired it into the bell tower. The rope went taut, Anselm’s descent came to an abrupt stop, and he crashed into the side of the tower, dislodging chunks of masonry.

Bernadetta let out an elated whoop. _“Bernie’s unstoppable!”_ she cheered, pumping her fist.

Anselm dug his claws into the wall of the tower and shook off the rubble, flexing his wings and ripping through the twine that had bound them. _“Edelgard!”_ he bellowed, his gentler words long since tossed aside. _“I’ll rip you in half with my bare hands!”_

 _“Come and try it!”_ Edelgard taunted him.

With an aggrieved roar, Anselm flung himself off the wall and spread his wings, catching the air and soaring into the heavens. His skeletal head yawned open and spat out lances of black light that fell across the monastery; Bernadetta pulled her pigeon into a roll to avoid the barrage and lost all of her remaining arrows in the maneuver. Edelgard could do nothing but hang on for dear life.

Hubert let out a pained shout as one of the lances ripped through both him and his bird; he dropped like a stone. Satisfied to have killed one of the nuisances, Anselm rose on black wings and dived, bearing down on Edelgard and Bernadetta like an eagle ready to snatch a fish from the sea.

 _“Where are your schemes_ now, _Edelgard?”_ Anselm crowed. _“You’re out of tricks! Die, die, die!”_

Hooking her arm around Bernadetta’s waist and swiveling back to face Anselm, Edelgard held out her paw and prepared to cast a fire spell. She couldn’t do anything more than a candle’s flame, but it was all she could do. Anselm’s skeletal maw gaped wider, hiding the grotesque face embedded in the hollow of his throat, and dark fire bubbled in the depths of his gullet.

 _“Bernie,”_ she gasped, though the wind swallowed up her voice, _“thank you for rescuing me!”_

As far as last words went, she could think of many things more eloquent, but nothing more heartfelt.

A full-size arrow shot from a full-size bow zipped past them, tearing through the air, and struck Anselm in the chest like a javelin thrown by a mighty knight, shattering his ribcage and skewering the rats scratching at his bones. The arrow burst out of his back in a shower of ichor. He let out a horrendous screech and writhed helplessly on his skewer.

 _“Just as I said,”_ Edelgard told Anselm as he scrabbled at the arrow in his chest and struggled to stay aloft, _“you’re predictable! I planned for every moment you thought victory had been in your grasp,”_ she lied, _“down to the smallest detail! You never had a chance, brother!”_

As though to punctuate her declaration, another arrow ripped through his grotesque torso and he fell as though struck stone dead, plummeting to the courtyard and hitting the flagstone-lined path through the grass with a sickening crack.

Shocked, Edelgard followed the arrow’s trajectory down to the ground and saw Shamir and Jeralt standing in front of the gazebo. Shamir had her bow trained on Anselm’s body, another arrow already nocked and ready to fire, but the mangled and sprawled-out form of what had once been the dreaded Plague Rat seemed not to need it. Then again, looks could be deceiving, and the knowledge that Shamir wasn’t taking her eyes off that thing made Edelgard feel much better.

Anselm’s body twitched and writhed and struggled to push itself back up; Shamir immediately embedded another arrow in its back. Black ichor spattered the white flagstones anew.

Bernadetta landed the pigeon on the gazebo’s railing and helped Edelgard off of it, letting it gratefully flap its wings and fly away. Edelgard leaned against her for support. Her legs were so numb that she (thankfully) couldn’t feel any of the bruises she’d earned from bareback riding a pigeon.

Edelgard caught her breath, only to have it immediately squeezed out of her.

 _“Don’t ever do that again!”_ Bernadetta sobbed into her chest, embracing her so tightly that Edelgard could swear she felt a few ribs crack. _“I thought you were going to k-kill yourself for me and I didn’t want to live with that burden, I-I wanted_ you _to live and be happy and—a-and I don’t want to live in a world without you, so please, please, please, El, don’t ever trade your life for mine, ever, ever,_ ever _again—”_

“Bernie.” Edelgard rested a paw on her head and gently threaded her fingers through her hair. “Bernie, Bernie, please. It’s okay.” But getting a word in edgewise, it seemed, was futile. Talking to Bernie when she was worked up like this was like talking to a brick wall.

 _“I thought you were committing suicide and—and Bernie’s such a terrible friend,”_ she wailed, beating her chest, _“th-that I didn’t even_ notice _until it was too late how m-miserable you were, even though all the clues were right in f-front of me…”_

“Bernie, calm down.” Edelgard returned her embrace and held her tight as Bernadetta’s voice grew increasingly muffled against her chest. She stroked her fur and ran her fingers in tight circles between her shoulders, hoping to knead and massage the anxiety out of her muscles. “You’re a good friend. A very good friend.”

_“I didn’t want you to die for me…”_

“It’s okay. I had no intention of dying, not in the slightest. It was all an act, all part of our plan, and the plan worked perfectly. Just as I told Anselm.”

Bernadetta extricated her face from Edelgard’s chest and looked up at her. Her nose and whiskers quivered; tears stained the fur around her eyes. “It was… just an act?”

“All just an act.” Edelgard nodded. “Everyone was in on it. We played Anselm like a fiddle the whole time; I was never in any real danger.”

Bernadetta sniffled and took a deep, shuddering breath. “But…” she croaked, her voice hoarse.

“I’m sorry for making you worry. I just couldn’t let you die.” Edelgard leaned in to nuzzle her nose and wipe the tears from her eyes with a flick of her thumb. “When I look at you, Bernadetta, I don’t see a mouse. I see a brave girl who held onto her heart and soul in the face of torment and abuse when anyone else would have broken. I see what I’m fighting for— _who_ I’m fighting for. Not just myself, not just the memory of my lost family, not revenge. I see the world I want to create—a world free of unjust and dehumanizing hierarchies… a world for _you,_ Bernie. I couldn’t bear the thought of creating that world without you at my side to see me through.”

She hiccuped. “Aw… El…”

“But I won’t worry you again. I promise.”

Jeralt noticed them landing and rushed to the gazebo’s side. “Your Highness! I didn’t even know you were up there!” he said, scooping the two mice into his hand. “Uh… I hope you _wanted_ us to kill that thing.”

“Yes, very much so,” Edelgard said, looking down at Anselm’s mangled body.

A black shape flew by overhead and fluttered onto Jeralt’s shoulder. In his shock, he nearly leaped out of his skin; Edelgard and Bernadetta had to dig their claws into his fingers to keep from being thrown to the ground.

Constance disembarked from her bat, gave it a kiss on the forehead, and sent it on its way. Hubert was hanging over her shoulder. “Hello, Your Highness,” she called out to Edelgard, sounding oddly subdued. “Your manservant fell on top of me. I am glad that even the likes of me could serve as an adequate cushion. Hopefully, he will live…”

Hubert weakly raised his paw and gave Edelgard a weary wave. “I am fine,” he retorted. “Lady Edelgard, your left and right wings are at your beck and call.”

Jeralt plucked her and Hubert off his shoulder with his other hand. “Hi, Hubert. Thanks for picking him up, Constance. I’ll get him to Manuela as soon as I can.”

Constance bowed her head forlornly. “Would that I had earned your thanks, Captain,” she said. “Fortune smiled upon me, unworthy as I am, and graciously allowed him to fall atop my mount while I was flying.”

 _“What is wrong with Constance?”_ Edelgard whispered to Bernadetta, worried.

 _“She gets like that in the sunlight,”_ Bernadetta whispered back.

There was another sharp whoosh as Shamir unloaded another arrow into Anselm’s twitching body. “So… is this thing going to die anytime soon?” she asked.

“Yes,” Edelgard said. “Captain Jeralt, do you still have your gin on you?”

Jeralt smiled. “Yeah, you look like you could use a drink—”

“No. Pour it over that creature.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“No. I’ll have Father send some gin from the Imperial Palace’s storeroom to make it up for you.”

That earned her a laugh from him. “Not sure if it’s a fair trade, but alright, little lady.” He set Constance and Hubert aside, took out his flask, uncapped it, and emptied it over Anselm’s broken body. Shamir looked at him and barely raised her eyebrows in an uncharacteristic show of bemusement.

When Anselm’s broken body was doused, Edelgard took a deep breath, put out her paw, and summoned her reserves of magic just as Hubert and Lysithea had coached her yesterday. “You wanted to be the Flame Emperor?” she asked Anselm, though she doubted he could hear her. “Then be it.”

Anselm lifted his head. Edelgard found herself staring into his eye sockets, and just as the flame left her paw, she felt something take hold of her. A dark presence seized her mind.

Everything went black.

Silent.

Still.

Still as a grave.

She couldn’t even hear her own breath or her own pulse. She couldn’t _feel_ it. It was as though she was as dead as all her brothers and sisters. As though she were nothing but a corpse, nothing but a rotting body lying in repose six feet beneath the grass, worm-eaten until the last scrap of flesh was gone and the last of her most insignificant bones liquefied and bled into the dirt, until she met the same fate as everyone else.

And then a spark of light in the darkness, a face as pale as the full moon, impassive and inexpressive, with empty eyeholes and a splash of crimson fire painted across the alabaster surface. Behind it, gray and black armor draped in a flowing sable cape and adorned with plumes of scarlet feathers. The mask of the Flame Emperor, _her_ mask, _her_ face, the face she had worn to hide her most terrible deeds, loomed before her. And their eyes, red pinpricks in a sea of black, bored into hers.

An ornate axe materialized in their grip, its sleek steel head etched with silver, and with a throaty rush of wind it cut through the darkness and swung down at her. Edelgard raised her own hands and found them gripping an axe of her own, and the keen edge of the Flame Emperor’s blade rang against the haft like an old churchbell.

Swords and spears were elegant weapons. A sword was swift, a spear or lance was slow; but in the hands of a master, both were capable of grace and finesse and both could move in artful and subtle ways to disarm or subdue an enemy.

Axes were not. They were direct, unsubtle, and brutal. They did not allow for fancy parries and artful ripostes, only for great force directed singularly at their targets, and did not benefit from ostentatious flourishes except as methods of intimidation. Axes were for cutting a path.

The dance between Edelgard and the Flame Emperor was not the rapid artful ballet of two master swordsmen searching for an opening or the tense and slow progression of two knights probing each others’ defenses with their lances. It was a dance of heavy strikes, each one falling with the finality of an executioner’s blade. The strongest arms and the fleetest feet were all that mattered.

And Edelgard had both.

The Flame Emperor was weak, slow, and ungainly. Their heavy, intimidating armor was not one that allowed for ease of movement—it was all for theatrics. Edelgard knew that well; she had never intended to have to defend herself or attack an enemy in that garb and had hoped her plans would never require that. And it weighed them down: They fought with the brutish savagery of the Plague Rat, but every bit of strength they expended holding up their armor was strength that could not flow into their weapon.

Edelgard ducked beneath their wild and unruly strike and drove her axe into their abdomen, cutting through their cloak and scoring a bloody gash through the metal. The Flame Emperor reeled backward, struggled to block her next blow with the haft of their battleaxe, and beat a hasty retreat.

Each strike cut deeper, cutting another furrow in the metal armor. Her next blow buried the edge of her axe in the Flame Emperor’s helm, the ringing resonance of steel meeting steel washing across her bones.

The axe fell from the Flame Emperor’s grasp and vanished into the abyss, but they raised their hand and clenched their fist around Edelgard’s wrist. She felt the tiny bones shatter like fine ceramics dashed against a hardwood floor with a sickening, wet crunch. Her grip on her own axe faltered, and in the span of an instant, the tide turned.

She felt metal fingers around her neck, gauntleted thumbs pressing into the hollow of her throat; she heard her pulse roar in her ears like a waterfall and felt her own breath burn in her lungs. She reached out with her uninjured hand, her fingernails scraping against the alabaster metal mask. With every second, her trapped breath grew hotter and hotter as though her lungs were filled with fire, her heart beat harder and faster, throbbing, pounding like drums in her head. The burning spread through her lungs, wreathing her heart, bleeding into her muscles and running down her arms like poison in her veins.

Waves crashed against her legs, rising tide lapping at her ankles. The water was as cold as snow, as biting as bitter wind, thick as mud; every crashing, rolling wave brought the taste of salt to her lips and stung her eyes as the brine rose higher and higher, pinning her between fire within and ice without.

The sea swirled around her, dark and abyssal, the riptide sweeping around her legs and threatening to drag her under and never, ever let her go.

_I don’t wanna die! I don’t wanna die, Ansy!_

_It’s okay! It’s okay, El, I’ve got you! Just stop thrashing or you’ll drag us both under!_

_It’s so c—c-c—_

_Don’t swallow it or you’ll puke! Just stay calm. Your big brother Ansy’s got you._

The tongues of flames painted on the Flame Emperor’s mask began to move, to flow like fire leaping across dry straw across the mask’s blank face, wreathing around the helmet and snaking their way over armored pauldrons, leaping to Edelgard’s skin and crawling across her body, staining white red—as red as the flames welling up within her.

She wished she could scream, cry out, expel like a long stream of vomit every last bit of the fiery poison consuming her. Desperately, her fingers scrabbled at the edges of the Flame Emperor’s mask, curling around the seams where the mask and helmet joined, hooking around the metal.

The water inched upward, each crash of the waves against her waist stinging her eyes with spray as salty as tears.

 _Just kick with your feet, El! Can’t you even do_ that?

_I wanna go home!_

_El, you’re being a little coward! Don’t run away!_

Everything fell away except for that face. It was filling her world, filling her mind, her heart. Everything else was slipping away. Everything became numb except for that face. Everything went silent except for that face. Everything died except—

_El!_

At last, her arm wrenched the mask away from the Flame Emperor’s helm with a sickening screech like steel being rent asunder, revealing a face underneath that was just as pale—sunken eyes as pale gold as a harvest moon low on the horizon set into deep, dark shadows of nearly-skeletal eye sockets, hollow cheeks, corpse-blue lips so chapped and cracked that nearly-black blood trickled in rivulets down a sharp chin.

And the face loomed closer, eyes burning, a rat’s nest of snow-white hair falling over its brow. The armor was gone, too. Now the hands clasping her throat were not cold like metal, but cold like corpses, like Pascal’s body when he’d died in his sleep with his arms wrapped around her. Her nails dug into his flesh and scored parallel furrows in his arms.

_El!_

That voice rang like a bell. Sharp, sweet, beautiful.

_El!_

Anselm’s mouth wrenched open in a silent scream, so wide that the corners cracked and bled, as though he would unhinge his jaw, snakelike, and swallow her whole like the mouse she was, tail and all.

_El!_

A hand curled around her shoulder and pulled her back. And another, and another, gripping her tightly, but firmly, almost lovingly. And with each ring of the—

_El!_

—she heard a greater chorus join it, felt another hand pull her backward. Gloved hands, soft hands, calloused hands, gauntleted hands, each one warm and kind.

Anselm’s fingers tightened, pressing deeper and deeper until Edelgard could swear she felt his rough and ragged fingertips, fingernails sharper than a dragon’s claws, reach all the way down to her bones. She clamped her hand around one of his wrists and pulled with all her might, struggling to rip even one of his hands away from her throat, but with each passing second, she felt the strength drain from her body.

It wasn’t enough. Bernie, Hubert, Byleth, everyone, _everyone—_

And then a pale, ghostly hand fell on Anselm’s shoulder.

And another, and another, and another.

And behind the pallid hands, wavering in the abyss as though lying at the depths of an impossibly deep reflecting pool, blurry and indistinct, were nine faces speaking in nine voices, ringing at the edges of Edelgard’s memories, their voices just faint enough that she couldn’t make them out.

 _“No!”_ he snarled, clinging tighter and tighter to her neck, wrenching himself free of the ghosts’ grip. _“She belongs with you! She belongs with you!”_ His fingers slipped. _“Take_ her, _not me! Drag her to the eternal flames! No! No, no, no!”_ He tried to tighten his grip, but it only slipped further and further the tighter he squeezed. Edelgard felt the flames in her chest cool, the searing pain in her arms fade away, the fire in her veins flicker and gutter, the seawater that had risen to her chest receding. Soft warmth ran through her body.

The indistinct murmurs sharpened, and at the periphery of her hearing, she heard—

_We miss you, Ansy!_

Anselm’s face softened. His mouth uncurled into a sad, silent gasp, hanging agape.

_Let her be, Ansy. Come back to us._

One hand fell from Edelgard’s neck, Anselm’s arm wrenching behind him as the ghostly hands gripped it tighter and began to pull him back. Tears welled up in his eyes. His claws tore into her neck, cutting bloody furrows and spilling a warm waterfall down her chest. Rage twisted his face anew. The tears rolling down his cheeks caught in the angry furrows and creases in his skin. _“No!”_ he snarled. _“I won’t go! I won’t go! I deserve this! I deserve this! Give it to me, Edelgard! Edelgard!”_ he bellowed, flecks of ichor flying from his bloody lips. _“Give me your life! You don’t deserve it! You empty, shallow impostor! Drag her to hell, Burkhart! Drag her to hell, Justine! Drag her to hell and leave me here!”_

Edelgard kept her grip on his wrist, kept clutching harder, kept trying to rip it away from her throat. Her vision blurred, the colors turned gray, the indistinct shapes before her split apart and swirled around her like vultures circling a carcass.

His thumb fell away from the hollow of her throat and a breath of cool air seeped into her lungs; the world began to become more solid. She kept pushing. Anselm’s enraged roar cracked and broke as his own exertion got the best of him, but it still wasn’t enough. And the water rose up to her neck, forcing her to lift her head to keep the rippling seawater under her chin; the briny spray stung her nose and eyes, and she could feel it eating into her skin like rust setting into iron. The water was so heavy and the current so strong that it took all her strength just to move without being swept deeper into Anselm’s grasp.

A pale arm reached over her shoulder and a soft, slight hand curled around hers; another arm joined it, its hand larger and thicker, clasping itself around hers. Together, they forced Anselm back, and as her throat opened and fresh air trickled into her lungs, a defiant roar escaped her lips.

Anselm lost his grip on her throat and all but flew backward, reaching out and grabbing Edelgard by the arm in a last-ditch attempt to moor himself. His ragged claws cut into her forearm and dug furrows down her skin all the way to her wrist. She could feel her shoulder wrench itself out of her socket.

 _“Let me live for you!”_ he cried out, his voice cracking. He sounded like a child. _“Don’t take me! Let me live for you!”_

He inched his way up her arm. Each stab of his claws into her flesh spread venom through her veins, setting her flesh alight and peeling it away from her bones.

A warm current of water swirled around her hand, cradling her broken wrist. She felt familiar fingers curl around it and a warm wave of healing magic rippled through her flesh all the way down to her bones. Her fingers twitched anew and found drifting in the receding tide the brine-bitten haft of a battleaxe. As Anselm gripped her tighter and tried to wrench her free of her own anchors, she grasped the axe and lifted it up, as high up above the water’s surface as she could. Seawater and sand poured off its steel edge and ran down her arm.

The rage on his face turned to shock, his mouth and eyes widening, his face wrenching in terror.

And then, with one decisive swing, she liberated his hand from his wrist and liberated herself from his body.

He jerked backward and with nothing holding him back, the hands clinging to his body and the relentless current of the riptide dragged him into the darkness so swiftly that he didn’t even have time to cry out before he was too far away to be heard anymore.

Edelgard watched the ghostly faces of her brothers and sisters recede into the shadows along with him. Her heart ached. She reached out for them and a silent plea left her mouth— _take me with you, take me with you, take me with you!_

She wanted to be with them. She wanted to remember their faces. She wanted to recall their voices.

But the others dragged her out of the water.

The darkness and silence receded. The world returned. The fireball she’d cast lit a wavering blue fire atop Anselm’s body that quickly spread over his scales but just as quickly extinguished itself. As pitiful as the flames were, it was enough to reduce his husk to black ash drifting on the wind; in a matter of seconds, all that was left of Anselm, the last of her brothers and sisters, was a black smear on the cobblestone path surrounding alabaster-white rat bones picked completely clean of flesh and gleaming like ivory in the morning sunlight.

Jeralt frowned. “Well, if I’d known _that_ was what you’d meant to do, I’d have gone and got my rum so you could’ve properly flambéed him,” he said. “Gin doesn’t burn that impressively, though I guess it got the job done…”

Edelgard could barely hear his voice. He sounded as though he’d suddenly receded a thousand miles. Her legs buckled beneath her, and the last thing she heard was Bernadetta crying out in surprise and struggling to keep a steady grip on her. Hubert rushed to her side and took hold of her in spite of her own injuries.

She collapsed. A gentle warmth enveloped her as her wings furled around her, dulling the pain to a warm and intoxicating throb in time with the slowing beat of her heart; she fell into a deep, peaceful sleep.

* * *

There was an abandoned chapel near the edge of the monastery’s innermost wall. The walls had buckled and the roof had collapsed. So Edelgard had heard, a fire had claimed this chapel about twenty years ago. Only a few of these such small parcels of Garreg Mach had fallen into disuse, their windows and doors long since boarded up and gossamer cobwebs strung across their dark innards. The academy’s faculty and the monastic community avoided these dark corners because they were safety hazards; the students because many believed they were haunted. Edelgard had met with Thales and other Agarthan agents here in this very chapel once or twice.

As soon as she had regained consciousness, Yuri and his Ashen Wolves had taken her and a few of her fellow mice to this chapel. He’d said there was something in there that only they could see.

The chapel’s long-since disused interior was dark and musty. Things had lived little lives here and died little deaths here. A few worn-down candle nubs lit the dusty, debris-speckled floor, providing light to the darkest parts untouched by the lone afternoon sunbeam streaming through a gap in the broken ceiling. A few cloaked mice milled around here, poking and prodding at satchels and sacks that had been piled on the floor. A trail of ichor stained the stone tiles.

Edelgard walked with a wooden training lance in one paw and Bernadetta in the other, leaning on both to keep herself steady. Hubert clung to her like a shadow, ready to catch her if she fell, and since he was still unsteady on his feet himself, Byleth stayed by him, reading to catch him if _he_ fell. Though the worst of her injuries had healed easily enough—a human-sized dose of healing magic courtesy of Professor Manuela was more than enough for a mouse’s tiny body—her whole body still ached, even down to the very tip of her tail. Every step she took reminded her that every muscle in her body had been beaten into jelly.

“So,” Yuri said, “this is where we think the survivors of Mousehaven set up their little camp.” He picked up a satchel and pulled a few stale bread crumbs out of it, nibbling disinterestedly on then. “We tracked our little thief here, followed a trail of gross black sludge because we were curious and… long story short, that’s how we found ourselves in the mausoleum while you were mounting your little rescue mission.”

“And we were fortunate for that,” Dimitri said. He bowed politely to Yuri. “We must thank you and your Ashen Wolves from the bottom of our hearts. If not for you, we might have all met our ends in there. Edelgard and Bernadetta certainly would have.”

“Aw, shucks. It was nothing.” Yuri smiled. “I mean, you _do_ owe us big time, though. _All_ of you.”

“We’ll work out some means to repay you later,” Edelgard said, keeping a comforting paw on Bernadetta’s shoulder. Bernadetta was already doing most of the standing for both of them; it was the least she could do to keep her calm in Yuri’s presence.

“No need to be frosty,” he replied. “I hope you’ll consider us even for what happened back in Chrysalis Row.” His gaze lingered on Bernadetta. “And other… unfortunate interactions. Anyway, we’ve been scouring this place for the past few days since then, and we’ve found something you’ll find interesting.”

One of the cloaked mice rummaging through the purloined supplies perked up at the sound of Edelgard’s voice. Of the several accompanying Yuri and his posse, he was the only one wearing the beaked facemask of an Agarthan mage.

“Lady Edelgard, Your Highness!” He stood up and bowed. “It’s been a while, eh?”

“Ah, Wesper.” Edelgard nodded curtly. “My apologies for losing track of you in the citadel.”

“No worries; things got pretty chaotic once Cornelia set off the Pyrrhus Protocol or whatever and blew the city to kingdom come.” He shrugged. “I stuck with Yuri’s gang and things worked out well enough. Anyway, as he was saying, I think you’ll be interested in something we found here earlier this morning.” With a flourish, he drew a heavy burlap sheet off of a lump resting on the floor.

Edelgard gasped and heard her gasp reciprocated by everybody else. It was a glass vial, about three inches long, capped with a cork, and filled with liquid. The glass was brown, but the liquid inside seemed clear. “Is that…”

“I _knew_ it!” Claude crowed. “I _knew_ they were holding onto the antidote!”

“Now, now, don’t get your tails in a twist,” Yuri said. “We don’t know what it is yet.”

“Yeah.” Balthus patted his chest and let out a sardonic laugh. “If we were sure that was the antidote, do you think we’d still be stuck like this?”

“We must account for all the possibilities,” Constance said. “It could easily just be water.”

“Or arsenic,” Wesper said, “Or any manner of unpleasant thing.”

“Or it could be some other fucked-up transformation potion,” Hapi said, “that’d turn us into cockroaches or spiders or something. Dunno about you, but I’ve got enough legs right now, thanks.”

“Yeah. And which of you wants to be the first to test it?” Yuri cast a glance around the room. “Anyone? Any takers? Who here wants to die immediately? Or turn into a stinkbug or something? Hubert, maybe?”

Hubert stepped forward. “I would—”

Edelgard put a paw over his chest. “No.”

“Besides, if it _is_ the antidote, and you transform right here, you’ll be naked,” Claude reminded everyone.

“Yeah,” Yuri said. “Anyone here wanna inflict on us the sight of their gargantuan unmentionables? Ladies? Gentlemen? I’m not picky.”

Everyone sheepishly looked away from each other.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought. Anyway, I’m sure one of your fancy professors with all their book-learning has some way of analyzing that stuff to see what it really is,” he went on. “All I ask is that when you’re done with the antidote, you give whatever’s left over to us. We’ve got about a hundred people down in Abyss who don’t want to be mice anymore.”

“I think that can be arranged,” Dimitri said. “Your heroism has more than earned it. But why not bring this to the Knights of Seiros first?”

Hapi scoffed. “Those assholes? Don’t trust ‘em as far as we can throw ‘em. You guys, though, you’re cool. As long as you keep an eye on it, we know it’ll be in safe hands.”

Edelgard knelt down and rested her paw on the surface of the glass vial. Could it really be the antidote she thought had been destroyed? It had to be—Cornelia and Solon had to have filled their flasks from _something—_ but as Yuri and company had pointed out, it could easily be another fake, like the one Anselm had destroyed, or poison. Still, being so close to this vial, something she had despaired had been lost no matter how much she’d tried to be rational, filled her heart with a warm, almost _aching_ feeling. It could be the key to her humanity. She could be a human again. She could be a princess again. She could still be the next emperor, she could still change the world—even if she did have to drastically reconsider her methods now that Claude and Dimitri knew about her old plans.

She could still make all that suffering mean something, if she could make a world out of it where what had happened to herself and Anselm all those years ago never had to happen again.

She could live for them.

A cool steel blade rested itself menacingly against her shoulder. Byleth, the only one who’d came here armed, reached for her sword. Edelgard turned her head and followed the length of a long steel blade up to the mouse wielding it. Underneath loose and burned robes and the remains of a very puffy tunic, bandages swathed his body, covering one eye and most of his chest. His brown fur and whiskers were ragged and singed. A pack of matches were sheathed at his hip. She recognized him immediately and felt a pang of revulsion.

“Matthias?” Bernadetta piped up. “Is that _you?”_

“Easy with the blade, Mattie,” Yuri cautioned.

Matthias recoiled from Edelgard’s glare and halfheartedly let the sword slip from his paw and clatter to the floor. “Right,” he mumbled sheepishly, averting his eyes. “Not sure why I did that. Anyway, yup, hi, it’s me, Mattie.” He took a step back and sighed, his shoulders slumping. “So, I know we sorta parted on, uh, less than amicable terms, on part of my, uh, unfortunate deeds being uncovered and all…”

“Putting it lightly, are we?” Hubert snarled. “Everything that happened here was your fault, wretch!”

Matthias gave him a hangdog look. “I mean, it was all the Plague Rat’s fault, but yeah, I did my part. And y’know, thinking about it, I figured I just had to, um, find my way back up here and… well… I gotta apologize. So, um, Edelgard, Bernie, Hubert, and uh, all the rest of you… I’m sorry. I’m really, really sorry. I’m really, horribly, er… I-Is that enough? I’ve never had to apologize for something this big.” He let out a nervous laugh and scratched his cheek. “I just… I was just so desperate to find someone who could help us that I just… acted like an idiot.”

“You did,” Edelgard said frostily.

“But Edelgard, can you tell me… what I should’ve done? I hadn’t thought there was another way. I just needed someone to help us and, well… there you were, unstoppable, amazing, beautiful—f-for a human, I mean. I mean, yeah, sure, Yuri and his pals and Alois and Catherine are helping us relocate now, which is cool, and everything’s working out for the best… I just don’t know how we would’ve gotten to this point without what I did to you, uh, happening. So…” He raised his head and struggled to look her in the eyes. “So what was I supposed to do?”

Edelgard was taken aback. _What should I have done instead?_ It was a question that had been ringing in the back of her mind ever since the extent of her partnership with the Agarthans had been uncovered. What other path could have led her to her end goal? She’d spent her entire adolescence thinking about it and had always come to the same answer, so who was she to tell him otherwise?

“We needed someone to save us, after all,” he said to her. “Didn’t we?”

Bernadetta spoke up. “You could’ve just… asked us for help?”

Byleth nodded in agreement. “I can’t say the same for everyone, but I know if a talking mouse had come to me and said his people needed help, I’d have helped,” she said.

“That’s your answer, then,” Edelgard told Matthias. She rose to her feet. “You can’t rely on gods and saviors to solve your problems. It’s your responsibility to cut a path to your future yourself.”

“And it’s your friends’ responsibility,” Claude said, “to make sure the path you’re cutting is the right one.” He laid a paw on Edelgard’s shoulder. “Right, friend?”

Edelgard looked at him, bemused and taken aback, and all he did was give one of his infuriating winks and a smile that didn’t quite reach all the way to his eyes. Since when had they been friends? Had the whole ‘Alliance of Four Mouses’ thing gone to his head? Or was it because he knew of her plans? There was something sinister about his words.

“I… think I get it,” Matthias mumbled. “Maybe. Kinda. I guess I’ll sleep on it, see how that goes. Um… thank you again, Edelgard, and… uh… once again, I’m sorry.” He held out his paw. “Can we shake on it?”

“Shake on what?”

“Um… you know, water under the hatchet, burying the bridge, er…” Matthias picked at one of his bandages. “C-Can we… still be friends, Edelgard? Please? I’ve got nothing but respect for you and I… don’t wanna have you thinking I’m, like, y’know, a… _bad_ guy or something.”

Edelgard took his paw. “Just _ask_ the next time your people—”

“—Mousefolk—”

“—the next time _mousefolk_ need help, Matthias.”

Matthias instantly brightened. “Will do!” he said, tightening his grasp on her paw and shaking it vigorously. “A-And you can visit us when we’re resettled! We’re gonna make a little village in the Sealed Forest, just south of Mousehaven, and we’re gonna make a fortress in the trees! Imagine! Us, living in trees, like squirrels! Zeke’s not too enthusiastic about it, but hey, classic Zeke—no imagination!”

“Yes, um…” Edelgard tried to extricate herself, but his enthusiasm was overwhelming. “That is indeed classic Zeke.”

“He’ll come around. You know how he likes to indulge me. And he’s actually being sorta kinda nice to your formerly-human pals! The last time Yuri visited him, he only used half of the curse words he knows!”

Yuri rubbed his ears. “That was _half?”_

“He might even be civil to _you_ if you visit us, Edelgard!” Matthias said, grinning. “It’s gonna be a new Golden Age for Mousefolk, and it’s all thanks to you!”

Edelgard finally extracted her paw from his vigorous grip. “Ah…”

His smile shrank. “I mean…” He scratched sheepishly at his ear. His nose and whiskers twitched. “I mean, uh… I… wish I could’ve involved you in a better, more consensual way. So, uh… Plague Rat’s dead now, right?”

“As a doornail.”

“Good. Good, good, good. That guy was downright nasty. Glad to hear he won’t be killing anyone anymore. So, uh… that’s it, then. I guess the next time I see you, you’ll be a proper human again. Don’t step on me, okay?”

“I can’t make any promises.”

“And, uh…” Matthias looked away and tugged on his collar. “Um… you and Bernie were really pretty mice, too.”

“What?”

He grabbed his sword off the floor, shoved his way past her, and ran for the exit. “I’ll see you in Abyss, Yuri! Bye, everyone! Don’t run after me!”

Everyone watched him run out with his tail between his legs.

“And good riddance,” Hubert grumbled. “Very well. Let’s take this bottle back to the academy and hope that Professor Manuela does not drink it during her next bender.”

“And don’t forget about us,” Yuri reminded him, “or we’ll play all kinds of… mouse tricks on you.”

Claude took Edelgard by the shoulder. “So, Edelgard, can we talk? Privately?” He winked again. “As friends?”

“We’re not—”

“Of course we are, now come with me and let’s chat.” He all but dragged her away from the others. Hubert eyed him suspiciously and made to follow; Edelgard gave him a curt nod that said, _stay back, but stay wary._

“I heard your leg was in terrible shape; I’m glad to see it’s healed already,” she said sardonically as Claude pulled her along.

“Of _course_ it’s healed already. You were unconscious for three days.”

Edelgard couldn’t tell if he was joking, but she’d completely lost track of the passage of time. “So what’s this about?”

“It’s about the antidote,” Claude said, letting go of her and putting his paws on his hips. “The _real_ antidote. The real antidote being, of course, the friends we made along the way.” A sly grin crossed his face. “I think I have a proposition for you, Miss Future Emperor.”

Edelgard gave him an incredulous look.

“You talk a lot of sense. Put simply, you’re right. I mean, I’m not too committed to the whole ‘Rhea is an ageless thousand-year-old dragon in human guise’ thing you’re on about, but the Church of Seiros _is_ standing in the way of progress. And they’re not gonna go down without one hell of a fight.”

Edelgard was amazed. Claude was speaking her language. He couldn’t _understand_ that quickly and easily, could he? What was he up to?

“Me, I get your point about Crests, but my major concern is showing the people of Fódlan that there’s more to the outside world than what they’ve been told is true and right—but it’s the church that keeps people isolated and insular, just as it’s the church that keeps people enslaved to the aristocracy. However you slice it, if you want to move things forward, you’ve got to take Rhea down a peg… down a _lot_ of pegs.” He laughed. “Honestly, if _you_ don’t start a war to change things, _I_ probably will at some point. But maybe if both of us work together, neither of us has to.”

“You’re serious,” Edelgard said, disbelieving her own words. She’d never seen Claude’s eyes brighten to match his smile before. She’d never seen him with a genuine look of happiness on his face.

“Close your mouth; you’re letting flies in.”

Still shocked, Edelgard closed her mouth.

“I’m just saying I think I’d be a much better ally than a bunch of pasty-faced chuds with megalomania. The Church of Seiros won’t be able to stand against the both of us, even if we have to bloody Dimitri’s nose a bit on our way to toppling them… although I think I can talk him over to our side if you give me a few months with him first.” He winked. “And if we get Dimitri on our side, I think we can win without drawing a single drop of blood. So, what do you say?”

She laughed. “I’d be honored to lead a revolution with you.”

“And I’d be honored to not have to worry about your axe cleaving me down the middle.” He offered her his paw. “You know, I always wondered what lengths I’d have to go to for this if I had to do it alone. I just assumed that’s how it would have to be—me, alone, against the world. You always took that as a given, too, right? After all, who can iconoclasts like us really trust?”

“And here I was,” she said, “thinking you didn’t have a serious bone in your body.”

“It’s usually in my best interest that people think that,” Claude replied. “So… partners in crime?”

Edelgard took his paw and gave it a firm shake. “Partners in crime.”

She left the chapel in high spirits. Her first major diplomatic alliance with another nation, and she wasn’t even emperor yet. For the first time in weeks, her future felt bright, and as much as it stung her sensitive eyes, even the sunlight shining down on the monastery seemed to agree with her.

* * *

Emperor Ionius IX of the Adrestian Empire was not a well man. He hadn’t been in a long, long time. His eyes were hooded and sunken, set deep into his face with a brow furrowed in perpetual worry above them and dark gray crescents beneath them, and his face was gaunt and brow was hollow. His shoulder-length hair was stark white, white as his daughter’s, and ragged; the beard that ran along his jawline was short, but scruffy and untamed. There were men decades older who looked younger, but most of those men were not emperors, and if the strain on his psyche borne of such responsibility had not been enough to prematurely age him, then the price he had paid for his unsanctioned ambition had certainly helped.

He was a man who lived his days sitting in his bedchambers waiting for his only remaining child to come and relieve him of his duties—whichever duties, that was, he still had left. Lord Volkhard von Arundel, regent of the empire, oversaw all administrative needs of Adrestia, as Ionius himself was too feeble of body and mind to do the hard work of ruling the land. He had resented the arrangement at first—raged and blustered to the heavens, damned Volkhard and Aegir and the other great noble houses, cursed their names and children—but as of late, as he withered, his rage had begun to subside to resignation.

Unlike Emperor Ionius, Thales, high priest of Agartha, was strong enough of body and mind to manage the affairs not only of the Adrestian Empire, but of his homeland as well—though he had to admit that even for him, the needs of both Enbarr and Shambhala were becoming difficult to balance. When Anselm ascended to the throne, hopefully he would prove obedient enough that Thales could scale back his duties to the Empire, at least until Adrestia and Agartha were truly one.

Certainly he would prove more obedient than that rat Edelgard.

“Volkhard, my friend,” Ionius said as he held a spoon in his wrinkled, liver-spotted hand and dipped it into the bowl of chicken broth—the most he could stomach these days—sitting on a tray on his lap, “tell me, is there news of Edelgard?”

Thales shook his head. “I am afraid not, Your Majesty. We have heard nothing from the Knights of Seiros since they informed us of her disappearance.”

“I see.” Ionius’s crestfallen eyes flitted downward. He took the spoon and blew on it. “And the Riegan boy and Blaiddyd boy, too?”

“I am afraid so.”

“Ah. Lambert must be worried sick. That little… what was his son’s name?”

“Dimitri. And I am afraid King Lambert is dead, Your Majesty. He has been dead for five years now.”

Ionius mumbled gravely. “Ah, yes. I remember now.” He carefully slipped his spoon into his mouth. “Mmh. This is good. Thank you for bringing my dinner to me, Volkhard.”

Thales bowed. “It is nothing, Your Majesty. You are my emperor… and my family.” He suppressed a smile. There was so much more he could do. Agarthan medicine could let the emperor live on, hale and hearty, sound of body and mind, for another century at least. If Ionius had any value to him other than as a space-filler, he would offer it to him. But he didn’t, so he didn’t. “You have a meeting with Duke Aegir scheduled for tomorrow morning. Do you mind if I attend in your stead?”

“No, no. By all means. I do detest that rotten man with all my heart. Just tell me when you receive news of our little El. She is all I have left…”

If only he knew. “Of course, Your Majesty. You will be the first to know.”

A bell rang; Thales opened the door to find a page standing before him with a letter clutched in his hand. “S-Sorry for intruding,” the young boy stammered, holding up the envelope he held, “b-but a letter for His Majesty the Emperor has arrived f-from the Knights of Seiros. Th-They say they are very sorry they arrived l-late, but were waylaid by several b-bandits and…”

Thales snatched it from his hand, and then patted the boy on his head. “Thank you, boy, for your promptness. You have more than made up for the knights’ sluggishness.” He closed the door in the page’s face. “What perfect timing, Your Majesty! Did you hear that? A letter from the Knights of Seiros!” He broke the wax seal on the envelope, suppressing a twinge of disgust as his fingertip brushed the embossed contours of the Crest of Seiros, and unfolded the paper within.

Ionius’ eyes lit up. “What does it say?” he gasped, leaning forward so swiftly that a ripple spread across his bowl. “Tell me, my friend!”

Thales cleared his throat. He, too, was interested in reading this letter’s contents. Neo Shambhala had gone dark. Keeping contact with his agents in Garreg Mach was difficult even on the best days; he couldn’t risk Seiros using whatever ancient technology rested in her collection to intercept radio transmissions. He had been burdened with mountains of paperwork as of late and had not had the chance to leave Enbarr and check in with Solon in person.

“‘To His Majesty the Emperor Ionius von Hresvelg IX of Adrestia,’” he read. “‘I hope and pray to the Goddess that this letter finds you well. The search for your daughter Edelgard has come to an end. She and the rest of the students who have gone missing have been found.’”

Ionius sighed in relief. Tears glittered in the hollows of his sunken eyes. “Oh, thank goodness… My daughter, safe and sound…”

“‘There have, however, been some complications,’” Thales continued. “‘All of the recovered students are healthy and unharmed. However, they have been exposed to a rare and exotic substance resulting in their transformation…’ into, er…” He tried to stop himself from laughing at the next word. “‘Mice.’”

Ionius was nonplussed. “Mice?”

Thales nodded. “Mice, Your Majesty,” he confirmed. Finally, some good news—the plan had started off well, at least. So many noble brats reduced to rodents—and with the Agarthans monopolizing the antidote, half the counties and dukedoms across all of Fódlan were eighteen months (at most) away from a wave of succession crises the likes of which the land had never seen. What a perfect storm of chaos to take advantage of!

“‘While your daughter is, unfortunately, currently a mouse, I assure you that she is a very high-spirited mouse. She is three inches long (six, counting the tail) and weighs roughly two-thirds of an ounce, and her fur is a lustrous white. She and her peers are being taken care of by the Officer’s Academy faculty while the search continues for a cure. I assure you that the Church of Seiros is doing everything in its power to secure a method to return your daughter to her normal self. May the Goddess Sothis smile upon you and bless you, Ionius. Sincerely, Archbishop Rhea of the Church of Seiros.’”

“Mice,” Ionius repeated, nodding slowly to himself. A smile cracked his lips. “Ah, my heart has lightened. I would like to see her. El, not the Archbishop.”

“As would I.”

“I wonder, could they put her in a box and poke air-holes in it, and send it by courier here to Enbarr?”

“The way would be too perilous. She could easily be seized by bandits. I would not risk it.”

“Yes. Yes, I suppose you are right.” Ionius finished his soup. “She must be a beautiful mouse.”

“I have no doubt that she is,” Thales said. He looked through the letter again. “Ah, there is more. It seems Archbishop Rhea has included a sketch of our little El from Seteth. It seems to be life-sized. Shall I leave the letter here for you to see?”

“If you would.”

Thales left the letter on the emperor’s bedside table. “Why don’t I take your bowl from you, Your Majesty?”

Ionius shook his head. “Oh, that will not be necessary; you must have work to get to. A servant will be coming up anyway.”

“Very well.” Thales turned around and headed for the door.

“Wait,” Ionius said.

He waited.

“I confess I have deeply hated you for a long time,” he said to Thales, “since you stole El away without my consent and assisted those treacherous nobles. But this past year, you have been nothing but kind to me. I thank you for taking on so many of my duties in my infirmity… those that Duke Aegir did not steal from me. You are like a brother to me, Volkhard. You always have been, even back when your sister and I were students at Garreg Mach together. I forgive you.”

Thales bowed his head. “Your forgiveness honors me, Your Majesty. Thank you.” He felt all warm and fuzzy inside; it was nice to know that the drugs he put in the old fool’s soup every night were having some effect on his sharpness after all.

“The prime minister’s son was one of the missing, was he not? What is his name? Ferdibert?”

“Ferdinand. And yes, he was among the missing, as were the children of Vestra, Bergliez, Hevring, and Varley.”

“Ah. Tell that horrible man and his horrible cohorts that my daughter is a much more beautiful mouse than any of _their_ children.”

“I shall,” Thales assured Ionius.

“And also— _do_ stop working so hard. There is a touch of silver in your hair.”

He lifted his hand to his hairline. His disguise must have been wearing thin. He would have to adjust it later. “I will try.”

“I could try my hand at some paperwork for you,” Ionius offered, wearing a weary, yet hopeful smile. “These old bones still ache for want of real power.”

“No, no, Your Majesty. You need your rest. Trust me to take care of the Empire in your stead.” And with that, Thales left the Emperor’s bedchambers and strolled down the splendid and opulent halls of the palace, letting rows of ostentatious statues and paintings made by the primitive, superstitious humans of Fódlan pass him by. He could scarcely believe that he was the same species as these hairless apes Seiros had cultivated. De-evolution was indeed real.

So Edelgard had been retrieved. That left him with only one question. Had Solon successfully carried out the operation? Was the beautiful little mouse Rhea spoke of _truly_ Edelgard, or Anselm in disguise?

As soon as he finished his business here in Enbarr, he would have to pay Garreg Mach a visit and meet with ‘her’ personally to find out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Remember how I said this would be the last chapter?
> 
> I lied.
> 
> This chapter was running sooooo long that I had to split it in half! Sadly all the most adorable Berniegard content is in the second half...
> 
> Anyway, stay tuned for the real final chapter!


	14. An Adrestian Tail

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Edelgard and her classmates have finally found the key to regaining their humanity, but the day is not yet won. Thales is on his way to Garreg Mach, and all of Edelgard's cunning and all of her friends may not be enough to finally free her from the shadowy clutches of Those Who Slither in the Dark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> El and Bernie's marvelous mice-adventures have come to an end, but if you're craving more, check out these [alternate endings](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24542266/chapters/59260687#workskin) to the fic my friend has written over the past 5 months!

The next few days crawled by as Edelgard waited for news about the antidote. She and Byleth had made sure to hand it off to Jeralt, the most trustworthy of the knights, worried (whether rationally or irrationally) that if it fell into the Church’s hands first, it might just happen to mysteriously go missing.

Seteth and his volunteers finished the wooden mouse dormitories they’d been working on, liberating her and her classmates from the dollhouses they’d been consigned to, although he still insisted on keeping the boys on one side of the Black Eagles classroom and the girls on the other to ‘leave room for Sothis,’ though his attempts at segregating the class by gender were stymied easily enough. Everyone was grateful to finally have the privacy of their own rooms, Bernadetta especially, who’d been thoroughly exhausted by being in such close proximity to so many other people in such cramped quarters.

The mice made the most of their captivity. Byleth’s training regimen kept them busy. Flayn came by as frequently as her older brother would allow her to bring in books to read or little treats from the dining hall. One day, after nearly a week of persistent and insistent encouragement from Annette, Dedue ventured to accompany Ashe to the kitchens to help him cook a plate of food from his homeland for the class to share; Edelgard had never before eaten something that burned her mouth so intensely and yet still tasted so good. Inspired, Petra did the same and helped one of the other human students prepare a dish from her native land of Brigid.

But Edelgard knew a gilded prison when she saw one.

As one week went by, and then another, Edelgard worried more and more that the vial they’d found had been yet another fake, or worse, that Rhea had used it on herself and thrown the rest away. High spirits began to flag all around; after all, nobody wanted to be stuck like this forever, except perhaps for Linhardt, who seemed characteristically blasé about the whole situation.

Dimitri despaired that there had been no mock battle between the three houses in Gronder Field last month, as this whole incident had started only a week before the end of the Wyvern Moon (his despair no doubt exacerbated when a few of his still-human classmates had stopped by to express their disappointment as well). On the other hand, Claude was more concerned that they might be stuck like this well into the next month and might miss the upcoming celebration of Garreg Mach’s nine-hundred-ninety-fifth anniversary, an oddly frivolous concern that no doubt masked deeper worry.

The month of the Red Wolf Moon dragged on, autumn marched on and winter loomed ahead, and hoarfrost glazed the grass and trees. The Black Eagles’ classroom was drafty and its stone walls and floor were dungeon-cold; when rime began to appear on the windows every morning, Seteth had to bring in little blankets for everyone, rugs for the floors, and a few extra oil lamps to better heat the room. The winter threatened to be early and long. Edelgard wondered if Rhea had somehow discovered her treachery and had decided to keep everyone this way forever as a form of collective punishment.

But then one morning Rhea herself came to the classroom with Seteth and Flayn at her side. She loomed over the gathered mice, restored to her human disguise and towering like a grand colossus, and the sight struck fear into Edelgard’s heart. Nonetheless, she joined the rest of her classmates and stood before her, and as the others yawned and rubbed the sleep from their eyes with blankets still drawn tightly over their shoulders, she stared up at the archbishop with grim thoughts in her head.

“Professor Hanneman has finally completed his assessment of the vial you discovered last month,” she announced, prompting a relieved sigh from all in attendance. “As you can tell from my appearance, it did indeed contain the world’s last known supply of _antemorphus muridae.”_

Claude feverishly rubbed his shoulders. “I bet he ‘completed his assessment’ a long time ago,” he muttered, “and she just kept us like this for the past two weeks for fun.”

“Or to make s-s-sure those little houses S-Seteth made for us didn’t g-go to waste,” Lysithea said, shivering under two blankets, her teeth chattering. Edelgard wasn’t surprised that she didn’t take to the cold well, given her condition. She herself wasn’t fond of the cold, either—even before the Crest experiments, she’d hated winter in Fhirdiad.

Rhea furrowed her brow, her nose almost imperceptibly twitching. Somehow, there was still something subtle in her face that looked oddly mouse-like, Edelgard noticed—perhaps her true nature had made the antidote less than effective on her. Or worse, Edelgard wondered, the antidote would work equally well on _everyone_ and would leave herself just subtly mousy as well.

“Excuse me, Claude, did you say something?” Rhea asked.

“Not at all, Lady Rhea!” Claude called out, vehemently shaking his head.

“Good. Now, we shall see to it that the antidote is administered to each of you so that you may finally resume your normal lives.” A smile crossed Rhea’s face as a susurrus of relieved whispers rustled through the student body. “I thank you so much for your patience; I am glad that all your faith in the Goddess carried you safely this far. Now, Edelgard, step forth.”

Edelgard nervously stepped forth.

“Edelgard, this entire incident began because of you,” Rhea said. “You were the initial target of the monsters responsible. And so…”

Edelgard found herself suddenly struck by a very Bernie-like stream of worrying thoughts. What would she say? _And so I’m not letting you change back? And so I’m going to lock you in a cage and keep you on my nightstand as a pet for the rest of your life? And so I’m going to feed you to my favorite cat?_

She had to calm herself down. Surely Rhea suspected nothing. Lysithea and Byleth were allies, Claude and Dimitri had committed themselves to secrecy, and Dedue had no talent for subterfuge; no one could have relayed Edelgard’s confession to her. Rhea only saw Edelgard as a distant, albeit direct descendant, literally or not. At this moment, with her secrets yet hidden, Edelgard was not yet known as a threat to her.

She shook the thoughts out of her head and took as deep a breath as she could without coming across as suspiciously nervous.

“And so, Edelgard… I believe it is only fair that you are the first to regain your humanity. Seteth, if you will?”

Seteth nodded and uncapped the tiny vial in his hands, then slid a small syringe inside it. He placed a droplet from the syringe into a thimble, which he handed to Rhea, who then knelt down and set it on the tabletop in front of Edelgard.

Bernadetta eagerly nudged her forward. _“Go on,”_ she squeaked in her ear, her voice cracking from the excitement. Edelgard could feel the eyes of all the rest of her classmates falling upon her.

She took the thimble, cupping it in her paws and staring down at the single droplet resting at the bottom. It was like water, colorless, odorless, and (she presumed) tasteless. Her eyes were wide, her paws shaking, her nose twitching and whiskers quivering. She could feel her heart throbbing in anticipation. Her knees were weak. Here was the key to her humanity. With this, all her ambitions became possible once more. With this, she could once again strive to make meaning out of her senseless existence. With this, the lives and deaths of her siblings—of Anselm—might one day serve a noble end and her sins might be absolved.

“Hanneman assures me,” Seteth said, “that one drop is the correct dosage, in case you were worried.” He laid his hand on the table, palm facing upward. “If you are ready, I will carry you to your room so you may administer the antidote and dress yourself in private.”

Edelgard took a deep breath and let out a great, relieved sigh. “I… I’m not ready.”

Hubert gave her a concerned look, one that seemed to ask if she suspected a trap. It was reasonable—if Rhea wanted to kill her, now would be an excellent time to do so with plenty of plausible deniability. But that was not what stayed her paw.

“The first person to fall victim to this poison wasn’t me,” Edelgard went on. “I think it’s only fair that Bernadetta be the first among us to change back.”

“But El,” Bernadetta gasped, “I—I mean, this was all—”

Edelgard pressed the thimble into her grasp. “Please, Bernie.”

“But you _have_ to go first,” she protested.

“Why? Because I was the daughter of an emperor instead of a count? Bernie, you know I don’t ascribe to such things.”

“Because this was all about you.”

“But you were first,” Edelgard insisted. _“Please,_ Bernie. For me. I want to see your human face again as soon as possible.”

An ugly voice inside her whispered that if the vial’s contents were poison, then she would be making Bernadetta, her dear and darling Bernadetta, into a sacrificial lamb to buy her a scant few minutes of life, but Edelgard quashed it. The antidote was real and Bernadetta deserved to have it first.

Bernadetta looked down at the thimble, and then looked back up at her. “Okay,” she relented, “but… _you_ have to be second, okay? Because I want to see _your_ human face as soon as possible, too.”

Edelgard smiled, brought her paw up to her cheek, and leaned in to nuzzle her nose. “Of course, my dear.”

Flustered, Bernadetta gripped the thimble tightly to her chest and climbed onto Seteth’s waiting hand. Edelgard watched him carry her out of the classroom and felt a pang of worry strike her heart when her gaze shifted to the smile on Rhea’s face.

* * *

Bernadetta woke up groggy and aching. Just like when she’d been force-fed that poison so long ago, her head felt fuzzy and her memories felt jumbled. She remembered Seteth picking her up off the table and carrying her through the courtyard to her dorm, she remembered lifting the little thimbleful of antidote to her mouth and lapping it up… and that was it.

She stretched her aching limbs and yawned, realizing that she was buried in her bedsheets. As though it had all been a dream. She raised a paw to her mouth to stifle the yawn and felt a very human hand instead. A very human hand, with very human fingertips and very human fingernails (albeit a little long, maybe); and those human fingertips brushed against human cheeks that didn’t have even a trace of fur or bristly whiskers and traced the shape of a human nose and the contours of human lips. She felt the human curve of her chin and jaw, not a sharp little snout, and the almost-unfamiliar whorls of human ears.

Her heart leaping, she threw her sheets to the floor. She felt along her back, all the way down her spine, and there wasn’t even a hint of a tail. And she looked around her room and the colors of everything were vivid and vibrant, especially the gorgeous red carpet laid over the floor.

 _Red._ She’d gone so long without seeing _red_ that the color hit her like one of Caspar’s fists. It was so brilliant that she almost fainted. And nothing in her room towered over her anymore, and all her precious dolls of pitcher plants and flytraps were resting on her desk waiting for her, and all her books as well, and _everything_ was just like it had been. It was as though the past month had been nothing but a dream! Maybe only a single night had passed—yes, of course! Dreams were weird like that! She could have dreamed that she’d turned into a mouse, that she’d on that adventure with Edelgard…

And if all that had been a dream, then that meant it was Monday morning and she was late for class! Professor Byleth was going to be so mad at her, and Edelgard would probably give her a stern talking-to…

She leaped out of bed and realized two things.

Firstly, that she was stark naked.

Secondly, she wasn’t quite sure how to stand anymore.

She picked herself up off the floor, rubbing her aching elbows. Her legs wobbled beneath her as if she’d forgotten how to use them. And weirdly enough, although she checked about a half dozen times and she was _sure_ she didn’t have a tail, she could still feel it swaying behind her all the way up to its tip.

And then there was not having whiskers anymore. She could hardly feel the air around her. She kept twitching her nose to get a better sense of her surroundings and it didn’t work.

She must have had a horrible fever last night, she reasoned as she steadied herself and gingerly half-crawled, half-crept to her dresser drawers to take out her uniform. She was still delusional.

As she dressed herself, she thought more about that strange dream. Most of it was so _vivid,_ she could recall it as though she’d lived through it. She found herself almost regretting that it had been a dream. It had been terrifying at so many points, but also she’d gotten to know Edelgard so well… if all of that had just been her imagination, then she would miss it. She would miss being Edelgard’s friend. She would miss hearing her call her ‘Bernie-Bear.’

But Edelgard having ten long-lost siblings who’d all died in grisly experiments, except for the one who’d come back to seek revenge? Edelgard cuddling and snuggling her to get away from her nightmares? Edelgard whispering _‘I need you, Bernie-Bear’_ into her ear? It was the kind of thing that only happened in the kind of adventure stories Bernadetta liked to read and write. It couldn’t be real.

Her chest ached, though. That was the Edelgard she _wished_ was real. The one she didn’t have to be afraid of.

Or maybe her chest ached because somehow, her uniform felt just a bit too small for her. The skirt hadn’t always been this short, right? And the blouse hadn’t always been so tight around her chest? Had someone sneaked into her bedroom overnight and replaced her uniform with a smaller size? That was something Claude might do.

She had _other_ uniforms, though. They couldn’t _all_ be too small. She went through her dresser.

They were all too small.

She gave up and just put on a nightgown. She would have to explain to Byleth that someone had played a prank on her and stolen her clothes. Or, better yet, she would just stay in here all day, and perhaps for the rest of her life.

Yes, classic Bernie was back! She eased her way to her desk and flipped through her sketchbook and her notebook (she had just the idea for the next chapter of the story she’d been writing), then took one of her plush pitcher plant dolls, running her fingers across the soft, fuzzy felt surfaces and tight seams. She could make a dozen more of these. She _would_ make a dozen more of these. No—she had a better idea. She’d make a little doll based on what Edelgard had looked like as a mouse! And then hide it forever so that Edelgard would never, ever…

Somebody knocked on the door. _“Bernadetta?”_ Seteth’s voice bled through the door, muffled. _“Are you, er… finished changing?”_

She gasped. What was _Seteth_ doing here? Was she in trouble? “Uh… Uuhh… Um…”

_“I’ll take that as a yes. Are you decent?”_

“N-No!” What did Seteth want with her? Why was this happening to her? “I-I mean, um, y-yes but… I-I think someone snuck into my room and stole all my clothes and replaced them with smaller sizes but nothing fits except my nightgown so… um…”

The door opened and Seteth loomed over the threshold. “I cannot say we didn’t expect this. You’ll see a tailor later today. Now come along. I am sure Edelgard will be pleased to see you.”

“Uh… w-why? What did I do? Oh, no—is she gonna _expel_ me? Can she _do_ that?”

Seteth looked down at her and wrinkled his brow. The lines of his severe face were stretched taut in bemusement. Was it just Bernadetta’s imagination, or was he a little… shorter than she recalled? “What in Fódlan are you talking about, Bernadetta?”

Bernadetta struggled to look up at him. Instead, she looked down at the floor and twiddled her thumbs. “Um… Mister Seteth, did… did the past month happen, or did I dream all that?”

“I can assure you that the past month happened, as much as I wish it hadn’t.”

“So we were all mice—”

 _“You_ were—”

“And me and Edelgard—”

“Yes, she insisted you receive the antidote first.”

She could have jumped for joy. Then it had all been real—and she was Edelgard’s friend! Sewing and sketching and writing could wait—Edelgard was waiting for her! “Yes! Yes, let’s see her!”

Elated, she put on slippers and a heavy cloak and headed for the Black Eagles classroom on unsteady legs, often needing Seteth to catch her when she stumbled. He ended up having to half-carry her into the classroom where all of her formerly fellow mice were waiting.

And Rhea.

Bernadetta froze up. If the _good_ parts of the dream had been true, then the _bad_ parts had been as well. And those bad parts included Rhea being an immortal dragon who secretly ruled Fódlan from the shadows.

Rhea smiled sweetly at her. “Ah, Bernadetta. You must be so relieved.” Bernadetta looked down, afraid to meet her gaze, and saw the archbishop’s gown twitch a bit, the fabric jumping—and a small sliver of pale pink dart out briefly from beneath its hem. Was that—Did Rhea still have a _tail?_

While Bernadetta processed that oddity, Rhea looked down at the mice gathered on the table before her. “Edelgard, I suppose you will wish to join her?”

 _Edelgard!_ She had to show Edelgard that she was human again—

But before she could take another step, Flayn careened into her and wrapped her in a tight, warm hug. “Oh, Bernadetta! How delightful to see you again!” A broad smile lit up her soft, round face. “I am so happy for you. I have missed you, my friend!” Her bright green eyes sparkled, and then flitted upward. “Ah. You have… grown! How wonderful!”

“Um… t-thank you, Flayn,” Bernadetta stammered, wriggling free. Flayn was right; they’d previously been about the same height, and now she was noticeably taller. No wonder her uniform hadn’t fit right. “C-Can I see Edelgard—”

“Oh! Oh, yes, of course!” Flayn let her go. “I am sorry.”

Freed, Bernadetta knelt at the side of the table, peering at the rest of her class (who were all very much overjoyed to see her), but mostly at Edelgard, who gazed up at her with wonder in her little lilac eyes.

 _“Bernie,”_ Edelgard gasped, clasping her paws together. Her voice was barely a squeak, hardly audible over her classmates’ cheers (mostly Caspar’s). _“You’re breathtaking.”_

Bernadetta felt her cheeks flush. “D-Do you wanna, um… be human, too, El?” she asked, raising a hand to her and gently patting her on the cheek with her fingertip.

Edelgard took hold of her fingertip with her paws and nuzzled it, tickling her skin. “More than anything, Bernie. Take me with you.”

Rhea spoke to Seteth, Seteth readied another thimble, and Bernadetta volunteered to bring it and Edelgard to her room (she wouldn’t have wanted to entrust herself to Rhea or Seteth, anyway). She held Edelgard in the palm of her hand as she walked over to the dormitories, gingerly managing each step she took and carefully maneuvering up the stairs in case she forgot how to walk again. The hoary grass was cold against her bare ankles.

Seeing the monastery again in all its glory, from a human perspective at long last, was wonderful. Bernadetta couldn’t wait to visit her old haunts, like the greenhouse and the library and… that was it, really; she didn’t really go anywhere else except under duress. On the way to the dormitories, Edelgard sat in her hand and sniffed the fresh air, basking in the sunlight that bathed the courtyard and made the thin layer of rime on the rosebushes glitter like silver dust.

They went up to the second floor dormitories—Bernadetta was very, _very_ careful with the stairs—and after an agonizingly slow, inch-by-inch ascent, she brought Edelgard to her bedroom.

Edelgard’s bedroom, of course, was impeccable. Not a single book was out of place. Compared to how messy and cluttered Bernadetta’s own room was, it was the picture of perfection. One would expect no less from a princess. Being here felt like she was committing a crime by setting foot in it, even though Edelgard told her it was okay for her to be here. She wouldn’t trust anyone else except Hubert to do this for her, after all. She felt her heart pound and her breath quicken as she stepped over the threshold, recalling how mortified she’d been back when she and Edelgard had been unwilling roommates (it felt so long ago—like a lifetime had passed). To think that she was putting her feet on a princess’ rug, breathing a princess’ air… but it felt like normal rug and normal air.

“Well,” she said to Edelgard, “here we are. D-Do you want me to set you down on the bed?”

Edelgard sat, nestled in her palm, with her thimble resting in her lap. “Yes,” she said, oddly shaking her head, “but… not yet. Can you sit with me?”

“O-On the bed?”

“Yes, on the bed.”

Bernadetta sat down on Edelgard’s bed. She’d expected it to be softer, squishier, plusher, and the blankets and sheets _certainly_ were, but it seemed princesses got the same mattresses as the rest of the students. She and Edelgard sat together for a while.

“I missed my bedroom,” Edelgard sighed.

“Me, too.” That was the understatement of the year. Bernadetta had _yearned_ for her bedroom.

“It’s one thing about the academy I’ve always liked. To have the same bedroom as everyone else, whether noble, commoner, royalty… no special treatment.”

“What about the sheets?”

“Oh, Father sent those from the palace. I can’t turn down a birthday gift from him.”

Bernadetta laughed.

“Besides that,” Edelgard said, “no special treatment.”

“It’s nice,” Bernadetta agreed, a little emptily. She didn’t really have any thoughts on the matter, but knowing Edelgard, she knew why she found it important.

“I’m going to enjoy seeing the rest of the monastery again,” Edelgard added. “Enbarr will always be my home, despite what happened there. But here, this is where I made friends, found love…”

“Y-You’re in love with someone?” Bernadetta felt her heart skip a beat. “Who?”

Edelgard looked up at her and squinted suspiciously.

“It’s Hubert, i-isn’t it?”

She laughed. “I’ll tell you when you’re ready, Bernie.”

They sat together for just a little while longer. Edelgard remained curled up in her palm.

“Your father was wrong,” she said.

“Huh?”

“Your father was wrong about you. He told you so many times that you were worthless, unmarriageable, useless, that you’d never amount to anything. He was wrong every time.”

“Um… thanks,” Bernadetta said.

“Any man worthy of your hand in marriage would be lucky to have you,” Edelgard said. “Although if you’re unmarriageable, perhaps it’s for the best. Then I can have you all to myself.”

A nervous laugh bubbled its way up through Bernadetta’s throat. Something about the way Edelgard had said that made her skin tingle.

“By the way… how did you come to be at Garreg Mach?” Edelgard asked. “You don’t seem the type who would have come here of your own volition, and your father doesn’t seem the type to send you here.”

“Well, um… actually, it was my mother’s idea. She basically kidnapped me out of my own bedroom! One of her attendants stuffed me in a bag and when I woke up, I was in the monastery with a note from her and the admission fee for the academy in my purse!”

“That must have been horrible,” Edelgard said, and although she herself had suffered far, far worse in terms of abduction, Bernadetta knew that she meant what she said.

“But you’re right,” Bernadetta said. “Garreg Mach is really a wonderful place. I never thought I’d make friends here.”

“Anywhere this far from your father must be a wonderful place. Do you think your mother sent you here to get you away from him?”

“It was probably something my mother and father decided after Yuri, well… you know.”

“Well, even though it must have been frightening, I’m glad she sent you,” Edelgard said. “No matter what, if your father saw the two of us together, he would have no choice but to be proud of you.”

Bernadetta shook her head. “He’d find something to say. He always does.”

Edelgard laughed. “With _me_ glaring at him all the while? He may be a craven toad who helped the Prime Minister steal my father’s throne, but his kind are cowards who crumble in the face of true power. Not even a word from me and he would be licking your boots and begging for your forgiveness.”

“You think so?”

“And how do you think he will feel,” she asked, “when I tell you that your bravery saved my life? What would he think if I told him that you shot a monster point-blank in the eyes for me, that you carried me through my lowest points, that you caught me as I fell to my death? You’re the kind of heroine they write novels about. Someday, generations from now, they _will._ They’ll write all kinds of scandalous novels about us.”

“S-Scandalous?”

“The Church does its best to root them out, but all legendary duos have salacious stories told about them in the shadows. Kyphon and Loog, Seiros and Wilhelm, Indech and Cichol…”

“You’re saying they’ll write s-stories about us… d-doing—h-having s—being…” Bernadetta could feel the tips of her ears burning.

“Without a doubt. They may even write such stories within our lifetimes.”

The possibility elicited a terrified whimper from Bernadetta.

The two of them sat a bit longer together, the silence between them just a little more awkward. Edelgard remained in Bernadetta’s palm, unmoving. Even when Bernadetta eventually lifted her hand out of her lap and set it on the bed so that she could walk off, Edelgard stayed in her palm.

“Is something wrong?” Bernadetta asked her when the silence started to become uncomfortable. She lifted her hand to bring Edelgard closer while she fidgeted anxiously with the silk fabric of her nightgown. Silence was usually the most comfortable thing in the world to her, but not _now._ Now it just felt like something obvious was wrong and she was stupid for not noticing.

“No,” Edelgard said. “Nothing’s wrong. Nothing’s wrong at all.”

“El…” Bernadetta didn’t understand. _Something_ was wrong. Something _had_ to be wrong. Edelgard had wanted so desperately to be human again from day one and now she had her chance—so why was she hesitating? “Do you think it’s poison?”

Edelgard shook her head. “No, I don’t. I know it’s the antidote. But…”

“Don’t you want this?”

“Yes. Yes, Bernie, I’ve always wanted this…” She looked down at the droplet of antidote resting in her thimble. “But…”

“Then take it. With this, all your ambitions will be possible again! All that stuff you said about changing the world—I believe in it, and it can still happen!”

“I will,” Edelgard said. “I will. But… not now. Not yet. Now that humanity is within my grasp, I… I think I just want to try and enjoy this moment.”

“But you _hated_ being a mouse.”

Edelgard nodded. “I did. I do. But… scratch between my ears, Bernie. It itches.”

“O-Okay.” Bernadetta took her free hand, rested her fingertip atop Edelgard’s head, and began to lightly scratch with the tip of her fingernail.

Edelgard sighed and relaxed. Her ears twitched merrily. “In spite of it all, I’m going to miss this.”

Bernadetta held Edelgard in her hand and gently petted and scratched her for what felt like hours, cherishing the soft, warm weight resting in her palm. The rest of the world fell away; she even forgot about how nervous she was supposed to be.

Eventually, Edelgard set the thimble aside and reached out to grab her fingertip, then guided it away from her ears and to her cheek. “Now do here, please,” she squeaked.

Bernadetta giggled as Edelgard sniffed her fingertip, her cold, damp nose tickling her skin. “As you wish, Princess.” As she stroked her cheek and ran her thumb under her chin, she felt Edelgard’s whiskers tickle her skin. Her fur was soft and glossy, sleek as silk, and Bernadetta had to admit (though she feared to say it aloud) that _she_ was going to miss this, too. “You’re so _cute,_ El.”

“You were, too. Although that isn’t to say—I mean—you’re still quite cute now, of course.”

Her heart fluttered. She felt heat rise to her cheeks. “A-Am I? B-But my hair’s a mess, and I never wear any kind of makeup, and—”

“It adds to your… oh, what’s the word?” Edelgard yawned. _“Je ne sais quois?”_

“I don’t know, what?”

“Exactly.” She looked up at her, craning her neck to the heavens. “But, Bernadetta, I must admit that I am growing tired of looking up into your nostrils, so I suppose it is time to change back. I can’t be shorter than you; my pride simply won’t allow it.”

Bernadetta noticed how oddly resigned Edelgard sounded, and when she let her off her hand and set her down on the bed, Edelgard simply kept staring down at the antidote with trepidation. “Do you still want me to, um… scratch your tummy or something?” she asked.

Edelgard gave her a sharp, embarrassed look. “No, no, I’m… I suppose I’m ready.” She sloughed off the little mouse-sized uniform Bernadetta and Dedue had sewn for her and untied the ragged, dirty scrap of red cloth she had kept since her transformation, finally letting it fall from her shoulders and rest at her feet. She took a deep breath. Bernadetta watched her mousy little chest swell with apprehension. “I’m ready.”

She stayed as still as a statue.

“Maybe a little bit?”

“No, no, I’m fine.”

Bernadetta slipped off the bed and stood up, taking a few hesitant steps backward toward the door. “I guess I should leave, then. So you can, uh, dress yourself in private and all that…”

Edelgard looked up at Bernadetta and squeaked something, and Bernadetta realized that with her human ears, there was only a limited range that Edelgard’s voice would carry for her now. She knelt down at the side of the bed, bringing her face level with Edelgard.

The little princess stared up at Bernadetta with her little mousy eyes. And then, her voice quavering, she asked, “Will it hurt?”

“I don’t know,” Bernadetta admitted, wishing she could lie to her. “I didn’t feel anything, but for a few minutes afterward, I—I wasn’t sure where I was or what had happened to me,” she hastily added. “I thought it had all been a dream.”

Edelgard looked down at the antidote. “Can you stay with me?”

Of course. Bernadetta had been so stupid! Of course Edelgard was frightened that it might hurt! Surely the prospect of such pain brought back memories of those years in the dungeons, the horrible torture she’d endured…

“Of course,” she told Edelgard. “Of course I’ll stay with you, El.” She bowed down and gently planted her lips on Edelgard’s head. She did it all on instinct—she didn’t realize how mortified she _should_ have felt until she felt the princess’ soft fur against her lips, and… and for some reason, she _didn’t_ feel mortified. She just felt warm all over.

Then she felt Edelgard’s nose and whiskers brush against her lips in return and leaped backward from shock. “I-I’m so sorry!” she yelped. “I don’t know what came over me, El, I just—”

Edelgard smiled. “What would I do without you, Bernie?” she asked. “I can still vaguely recall how much the transformation hurt, how alone and afraid and disoriented I’d felt… so please, hold me.”

Bernadetta nodded.

And with that, Edelgard raised the thimble to the tip of her snout and drank from it. Instantly, she went rigid, the thimble falling from her paws and rolling onto the floor. She began to shiver and convulse; Bernadetta curled her hands around her to steady her.

She held Edelgard as tightly as she could, first cupping her hands around her body, then holding her paws in her hand, then holding her hand, then cradling her in her arms as fur receded into flesh. She felt flesh shape itself like soft clay and run like melted wax. The sound of Edelgard’s outcries were weak and soft, drowned out by the sound of bones creaking and snapping. When it was all over, Edelgard laid in her bed, her sheets a tangled and sweat-soaked mass wrapped around her body, and Bernadetta laid on top of her with her arms wrapped around a very human torso, hands resting on very human skin, with Edelgard’s very human face buried in her shoulder.

Bernadetta ran her fingers through Edelgard’s snowy hair. “It’s okay,” she consoled her. “It’s okay.”

Edelgard let out a muffled sob into her shoulder and pressed herself tighter against her.

“It’s all over now,” Bernadetta told her. Her hand slipped down Edelgard’s back, dipping between her shoulderblades, gently tracing the curve of her spine as the princess’ shoulders quaked and heaved. It was so strange, almost alluring, to feel bare skin beneath her fingertips and not silky, glossy fur. “It’s all over, El. You’re human again. Just like me.”

It took a few minutes for Bernadetta to realize that she was _laughing,_ not sobbing, and the tears staining her blouse were tears of joy.

Edelgard’s pulse slowed, her breath steadied itself, and her limp body slumped even deeper into Bernadetta’s arms. It took a few more minutes for Bernadetta to realize that she’d fallen asleep.

She didn’t know what to do now. Should she stay by Edelgard’s side? Tuck her into bed and leave? Tuck her into bed but stay here until she woke up? She had to do _something—_ she was holding her princess in her arms, and she was stark naked!

But before Bernadetta could make a decision, Edelgard pulled away from her, blearily cracking open her eyes and lifting a hand—a strong, yet delicate human hand with long, slender fingers—to her face to trace her cheek, her sharp jawline and nose, her brow. Her fingertips ghosted across her soft, pink lips. Her disheveled white hair hung in unruly wisps over her high forehead, clinging to pale skin that shimmered with sweat. A relieved smile crossed her face and a grateful gasp left her mouth, her eyes widening in amazement and gratitude. Bernadetta hadn’t seen that face in over a month. It was the most gorgeous face she’d ever seen.

Bernadetta’s gaze flicked downward for a second before instinctually and shamefully diverting itself as far away from Edelgard’s body as it could go. In that split second, what stuck in her mind, strangely enough, were all the ghostly white arcs and lines, all mechanically precise, ringing Edelgard’s wrists and ankles, running up her arms and legs, and tracing around her navel and her chest. Since the fur had covered them all up before, she’d never seen those scars littering Edelgard’s body. She’d never seen so _many_ scars, and never in such odd and deliberate shapes…

Edelgard looked down at herself, and her pale lavender eyes widened, and with two shocked and horrified screams in unison she and Bernadetta both realized what they were doing and threw themselves off of each other.

“I-I’m so, so, sorry!” Bernadetta stammered, staring intently at the floor she had fallen to while Edelgard cocooned herself in her sheets. Her cheeks were burning, and so was every other part of her body. “I w-wasn’t even thinking…”

“Bernadetta,” Edelgard gasped, panting, “wh… what am I doing here? What are _you_ doing here? Why are we human again and… and… a-and why am I _naked?”_

“Uh… what do you remember?”

“I woke up this morning. _We_ did, and we were still mice, and Jeralt came by to tell us that Rhea was on her way…”

“You took the antidote,” Bernadetta reminded her. “Um… well, you told _me_ to take it first, and then…”

Edelgard took a deep breath. “It’s… over, then. It’s over?”

Bernadetta nodded. “Yeah,” she mumbled. Deep down, she couldn’t help but be a little disappointed that Edelgard didn’t remember sitting with her on the bed, or… well, it was _kind of_ their first kiss. It had certainly been _Bernie’s._ “Yeah, it’s over. And, um… s-sorry that you’re naked and that I saw your, um, s-s… c-can you forget the last minute, too?”

“I almost wish I could.”

“Sorry.”

“No, no, I—I was—I was just startled,” Edelgard stammered back. “It’s just that not having any clothes on wasn’t such a scandalous situation when we were covered in fur, and… Why don’t you just keep looking at the floor while I get dressed?”

“Yes! Of course! Definitely!” Bernadetta insisted, trying to forget that not even a minute ago she had been entwined with a very naked girl, a very naked _princess,_ a very naked _future emperor._ “Oh, um, b-but a word of warning—none of my clothes fit when I transformed,” she told Edelgard, “p-probably because I grew a little while I was a mouse and since mice only live for a few years, uh, the past month must have been a mouse year or something…”

“Ah, understood. I’d expected as much,” Edelgard said, sounding her usual cool and composed self once again. Bernadetta heard the rustling of fabric as she rummaged through her drawers. “I’ve always been a bit short for my age. Perhaps I grew a little while I was a mouse as well and nobody noticed.”

Bernadetta waited while Edelgard went through her clothes.

“Are you _certain_ I’ve changed all the way back?” Edelgard asked. “I can still feel my tail.”

“Um… d-do you want me to look—”

“No!” Her voice cracked. “That’s, um… n-not necessary.”

“Don’t worry. I had to check about half a dozen times,” Bernadetta assured her. “It’s like, um… oh! Have you ever heard about people who’ve lost their arm or leg in battle saying they can still sometimes feel their fingers and toes? It’s like that, I guess.”

“Ah. Well… hopefully it will wear off soon.”

She heard the sound of a tangle of limbs hitting the floor. “Are you okay?” she asked, still making sure not to look at Edelgard.

“Yes, yes, I’m fine,” Edelgard insisted, picking herself back up. “I just… lost my balance for a bit. It’s hard to adjust to these proportions again. I’d forgotten my legs were so long.”

“Yeah, I was like that for a bit, too.”

“Imagine nearly half of the students in the academy, including proud heirs to our most illustrious noble families, flopping around the grounds like toddlers learning to walk.” Edelgard laughed. “And just in time to start practicing their dancing for the White Heron Cup, too. These next few days will be interesting.”

As though to punctuate her sentence, there was another thump on the floor.

Bernadetta waited, hearing Edelgard fumble a bit with the more ornate ornaments of her uniform. “I never thought I’d miss having whiskers,” the princess grumbled. “Even if my eyesight’s better, I feel half-blind without them.”

“Yeah, I’d never realized how much of a difference they made,” Bernadetta agreed.

“We’ll just have to readjust to our human deficiencies, however long it takes. There,” she finally said, and Bernadetta looked up to see her wearing her academy uniform, red tights and cape and all. She plucked at her cape with a wide-eyed, almost childlike look of amazement on her face. _“Red,”_ she sighed. “When I’m emperor, I’ll wear as much red as I can stand, from head to toe.”

“So how’s the fit?”

“Perfect,” she reluctantly admitted.

“I’m sorry.”

“No, no, it’s nothing.” She ran a comb through her hair to tame it, then took two lavender ribbons from her drawer and tied them into her hair to keep it out of her face. “I knew those experiments had stunted my growth. It was just nice to entertain the idea that I had a few inches left in me.”

She bent down and helped Bernadetta up, then eyed her suspiciously, and while the two of them stood at each other’s side, she very slowly lifted her hand to the top of her head and traced an invisible line to her.

It was at this moment that Bernadetta noticed something very strange about Edelgard. She didn’t _loom_ anymore. “Um… El? I-Is everything alright?”

Flustered, Edelgard pulled her hand back. “It’s nothing. Nothing, just…” Her eyes darted to the side as a crimson tinge flushed her cheeks. “Whoever heard of someone having a growth spurt at _eighteen?”_ she asked, incredulous.

Bernadetta finally realized what was off about Edelgard’s appearance. It was that she was just a bit shorter than her now. “Oh. Oh… I’m sorry,” she said, clasping her hands around Edelgard’s. “I didn’t mean to—”

Edelgard looked up at her and then shook her head. “No, no, it’s—it’s not as though I can command you to shrink. I don’t mind if you’re taller than me, Bernadetta. I don’t mind if I’m the shortest member of the Black Eagles,” she said, though it sounded like she did.

“But your pride…”

“My pride will allow you to be a _bit_ taller than me. Just a bit.”

“Maybe you could wear high heels?”

“In combat? Ridiculous!”

“Or stilts?” Bernadetta offered.

Edelgard looked at her. Her face crumpled. Bernadetta was seized by the sudden fear that she might start crying. But instead, Edelgard burst out laughing.

“I suppose I will always be vertically challenged,” she said, wiping tears of mirth from her eyes. “But don’t grow another inch, Bernie, I beg of you.”

“I’ll try, but I can’t make any promises.”

Edelgard sheepishly leaned in to nuzzle Bernadetta’s nose. It didn’t quite feel the same as when the two of them had been mice, but it was still enough to make Bernadetta feel warm from her head to her toes. “That’s good enough.”

“Maybe I’ll be as tall as Hubert,” Bernadetta teased her. “Maybe we’ll both loom over you.”

Edelgard held a hand over her mouth to stifle her laughter. She very carefully inched across the floor, struggling to reach her bed again, and fished around her tangled bedsheets until she found the little clothes and the ragged scrap of red silk she’d worn as a mouse. “Now… whatever shall we do with this?” she mused, pinching a corner of the little cloak between her finger and thumb. “It’s not of much use to me now.”

“For starters,” Bernadetta offered, “you could finally wash it?”

Edelgard sniffed it and wrinkled her nose. “Er… Yes. I was quite foolish about that, wasn’t I?”

“And then maybe give it to Matthias and let him put it into a mouse history museum. They could hang it like a tapestry or put it under glass to commemorate all the stuff you did!”

She laughed. “Matthias would like that, but I’m not sure I want them to remember me that way. That nonsense about saviors was what got us into this whole mess to begin with.” She sat down on the bed and set the little cloak aside. “Maybe I’ll keep it somewhere. As a memento.”

“I could embroider it onto something, like the inner lining of a coat or scarf,” Bernadetta suggested to her, “and that way you could still wear it… in spirit.”

“Hmm. That might be nice.” She rested her hand on her chin. “Would you like to visit the dining hall with me, Bernie? I’m famished.”

“Uh… sure, as long as we don’t sit under a chandelier.”

The two of them walked out of the bedroom and into the hall together, leaning on each other so that neither, hopefully, would trip and fall.

 _“Bernadetta! Lady Edelgard!”_ Petra’s voice rang out across the hall, and within seconds she had pounced on them like a fox who had just found a tasty rabbit. She was human again, too, and for the first time in weeks her magenta tattoos graced her tanned skin. She smiled from ear to ear as she wrapped her arms around both of them. “You two are a sight for eyes that hurt! I am having such gladness!”

 _“Save some for me, Petra!”_ Dorothea called out, stumbling down the hall. After a month, Bernadetta could finally see her perfect skin and gorgeous emerald eyes and perfect curves and… oh, Goddess, if there was such a thing as the most beautiful woman in the world, she would be it. The mere sight of her after so long made Bernadetta feel like fainting. “Edie! You and Bern were gone so long, we were starting to get worried…”

“Oh, has everyone else changed back already?” Edelgard asked.

Instead of answering her, Dorothea leaned in and planted a kiss on her cheek. “So…” she winked, further flustering an already beet-red Edelgard. “You and Bern took some time to yourselves, did you?”

Bernadetta felt as though she were about to burst into flames right then and there as Edelgard’s words about _salacious novels_ ran through her head. “U-Um… wh-what are you… I-I mean, yes, but—”

Dorothea wrapped her up in her arms and kissed her on the cheek, too. “Oh, Bern, you’re…” She pulled away, looking her up and down with her brilliant green eyes. Bernadetta suddenly felt as though she were wearing nothing at all and self-consciously clung to Edelgard’s side. “You really _have_ gotten taller! So, how’s it feel, Edie?”

“How’s what feel?” Edelgard asked. “Being human?” She sighed. “It’s wonderful. I’ve never been so— _”_

“Being shorter than everyone else in the Black Eagles.” Dorothea giggled. “Even Caspar sprouted an inch or two.”

Edelgard’s face fell. “I don’t feel anything. I don’t mind at all,” she lied.

“That’s good, because it doesn’t change a thing,” Dorothea assured her. “I’ll mock you relentlessly for it, of course, but my feelings for you are just as strong as ever.”

“I am not caring if you are the smallest,” said Petra, who was only an inch taller than Edelgard. “Actually, I am having envy. It is convenient that you can still be sleeping in those little houses Seteth made for us.”

Edelgard let out a snort of a self-deprecating laugh very unbecoming of a princess and clapped her hand over her mouth. Dorothea gave Petra a high-five.

 _“Do my ears deceive me,”_ Hubert growled, suddenly looming over the girls—properly _looming_ now, just as he had used to, restored to his full six feet and three inches and with his terrifyingly ashen, broad-jawed, high-cheekboned, no-eyebrowed face returned to him— _“or do I hear the princess of a vassal state of the Empire_ mocking _her liege?”_

“Why, Hubie,” Dorothea said, “your transformation must have been quite unpleasant for your temper to be as short as Edie. Do you need a hug?”

“At ease, Hubert,” Edelgard said. “I give my friends free rein to joke about my height… within reason.”

At the sight of the pleasant, genial smile on Edelgard’s face, Hubert’s scowl crumpled and Bernadetta swore she could see a hint of shimmering wetness shining in his pale yellow eyes. He wrapped her up in his arms, lifting her high enough off the floor that her toes could only graze it. _“Lady Edelgard,”_ he choked—yes, _he_ of all people was crying— _“There are no words to describe how I feel, seeing you in all your glory once again…”_

“Only because your vocabulary lacks words for anything but scheming and perfidy,” Ferdinand said, patting him on the shoulder. He set his sights on Dorothea. “Dearest Dorothea,” he added, flashing a handsome grin at her, “to set eyes once more on your incomparable beauty lifts my spirits so much that I may find myself ascending to heaven and joining the Goddess before my time.”

Dorothea rolled her eyes. “Oh, buzz off, bumblebee,” she said, though there was a smile on her face that despite her best efforts she couldn’t suppress. “Go teach Hubie some of your fancy words. Maybe you won’t finish so prematurely with him.”

Ferdinand’s face turned as red as his hair. Hubert’s face also turned as red as Ferdinand’s hair. Bernadetta also felt her face turn as red as Ferdinand’s hair. “I-I have not a clue what you are insinuating, Dorothea,” he stammered, lying, tugging at his collar and glancing nervously toward Hubert, who very pointedly looked away.

A door down the hall swung open and Claude poked a very human head through, raking his fingers blearily through his mop of black hair. _“Can you guys keep it down?”_ he called out. _“Some of us are trying to—”_ He gasped, his eyes widening with surprise and horror. “Oh, gods! Edelgard, the antidote didn’t work—you’ve only transformed halfway back!”

Edelgard narrowed her eyes and scowled. _“Hubert, kill him!”_ she barked.

“Would you break our alliance so soon?” Claude lamented. Hubert took a single step toward him and he immediately withdrew his head and slammed the door shut behind him, barricading himself in his bedroom.

Edelgard curled her arm around Bernadetta’s waist, and Bernadetta felt the princess’ hand rest with a warm, gentle weight on her hip that made her feel particularly weak in the knees. Bernadetta tried to look up at her out of habit and hastily lowered her head to meet her eyes.

The gathered Black Eagles made their way out of the dormitories together, moving as a collective mass down the stairs, and on the grassy lawn, Byleth, Jeralt, Alois, and Catherine were waiting for them.

“It’s the strangest thing,” Alois was saying, gesturing to a piece of paper clutched in his gauntleted hands. “These wanted posters started appearing in town a few weeks ago. See, the sketch looks just like Linhardt, aside from the mustache, but… who in the world is ‘Lin-Manuel Miranda,’ anyway? Does he have a twin we don’t know about? Perhaps an evil one—”

His head turned, his gaze met Bernadetta’s, and his eyes lit up, grinning as toothily as though he’d just told the worst pun in the world. “Why, Bernadetta! _There_ you are!”

Byleth turned to face her class wearing a brighter smile than Bernadetta—or probably _anyone—_ had ever seen on her face before, her azure blue-gray eyes gleaming in the sunlight.

* * *

Claude believed in a feast for every occasion. Winning mock battles, losing mock battles, birthdays, anniversaries, funerals, winning _real_ battles, losing _real_ battles, his answer to everything was an excess of good food and drink. Maybe that was how they did things in Almyra.

Dimitri wasn’t much for feasts—after all, he couldn’t taste much of anything—but if ever there was a proper occasion for one, he had to admit that this was it. Everyone in the dining hall seemed so _happy._ And why shouldn’t they be? The food and drink were, presumably, good; everyone who had previously been a mouse, himself included, was human again; all the students who’d been separated by these bizarre events could finally mingle with their peers. The atmosphere in the hall was abuzz with joy and relief.

And yet Dimitri had to admit that he felt a wholly inappropriate sense of melancholy consume him. He chalked it up to the pounding headache he had. Having eaten and drank his fill, or at least what he could manage, he stood in the corner of the dining hall and let the revelry pass him by. It was enough, he told himself to at least excuse his antisocial behavior in his mind, to simply be present.

Snippets of conversation drifted past him. _“Anyone else kinda miss having a tail?”_ Annette asked. _“See, I told you you’d all be back to normal as long as you ate well and exercised!”_ Raphael told Lysithea, giving her a hearty, meaty pat on the back. _“Of course, I was twice the mouse Lady Edelgard was,”_ Ferdinand bragged to Lorenz, _“and believe me, my friend, that is no small accomplishment!” “Yeah, so I was bench-pressing a good quarter-pound by the end of it,”_ Caspar boasted to an obviously unimpressed Felix, _“b-but I mean, hey, that’s a_ lot _for a mouse! That was, like, eight times my weight!”_ _“I’m just glad I’m back down to two nipples,”_ Linhardt said. _“Are you_ sure _my ears aren’t still a little too big? What about my teeth?”_ Hilda asked Marianne, who responded, _“I don’t quite remember what your ears used to look like, Hilda, I’m sorry…”_

Someone got the bright idea to start pushing tables out of the way to form a makeshift dance floor. The prospect made the twinge in Dimitri’s heart ache just a bit harder, dredging up memories of Edelgard’s dancing lessons all those years ago in Fhirdiad. And because of that, he found his gaze drifting unbidden to her. She was seated at Hubert’s side, and as a result looked as though she was plotting something wicked even though she was currently sharing what was probably a lovely dessert with Bernadetta.

She was happy, too.

The sight of her smile—a real, honest one that even crinkled the edges of her eyes—dredged up bittersweet emotions. Dimitri couldn’t lie to himself and say that the things she had done as the Flame Emperor didn’t rightly disgust him. He couldn’t tell himself in good faith that he didn’t still feel a twinge of disgust when he looked at her. But he was a beast who tried to be a man, too; as long as she was ill at ease with her unsavory deeds, as he was with his, then he could not in good conscience bear any ill will toward her.

Besides, even if she tried to deny it, deep down—deep, _deep_ down—she was still the same El he’d known all those years ago. He could tell from the way she smiled and laughed around Bernadetta and from the way she’d fought for her that the kindness he’d known her for was still there, no matter how much she told him that El had died long ago. And on top of that, she was part of what little of a family he had left.

“You can leave, Your Highness,” Dedue said to him, noticing his troubled demeanor. “No one will hold it against you if you retire to your bedroom.”

Dimitri rubbed his forehead to relieve his headache, though he wished he could do something about any of his other discomforts right now, namely how tightly some of his clothes fit on him, or the fact that he could still feel his tail every once in a while, or any of the other lingering oddities of having recently transformed from mouse to human. Some of the other students who’d experienced sudden growth spurts post-transformation, like Bernadetta, Caspar, Lysithea, and Annette, were wearing loose-fitting nightgowns or pajamas since their clothes no longer fit so comfortably; the idea hadn’t even occurred to Dimitri, who now felt like too much sausage stuffed into too small of a casing.

“I am fine, Dedue,” he said. “It’s alright. I’m just enjoying seeing everyone so happy again after so long. How are you feeling?”

“I am relieved,” Dedue said, “although I am also dismayed that we did not get so much use out of the little uniforms Bernadetta and I made. We should have worked faster and finished them sooner.”

“We still appreciated your work.” Dimitri rubbed his head again as his headache spiked and throbbed anew. “And it does my heart good to see you spending less time by your lonesome.” He was aware that his heart didn’t particularly look like it had been done any good recently, though, so he hoped Dedue would take him at his word.

“I will get you a drink, Your Highness,” Dedue decided, and went off to wade through the crowd.

Alone, Dimitri cradled his head in his hand, letting his fingers burrow into his hair as though it would help soothe him. It didn’t.

To his dismay, Claude sidled up next to him while he was convalescing. “Boy, Your Princeliness, if I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were _happier_ as a mouse. What’s wrong?”

“It’s nothing. I just have a headache.”

He furrowed his brow. “Are your parents yelling at you again? Back when you were a mouse, your ears would twitch when you were hearing voices; honestly, you were a lot easier to read back then…”

Dimitri pulled his hand away. “No, Claude. My parents have not been ‘yelling’ at me,” he said, thankful for his concern but feeling oddly dismissed by his choice of vocabulary.

Claude scratched his chin. Though he hadn’t grown an inch, there was a bit of scruff lining his jaw that hadn’t been there before. “Oh, uh… speaking of that, I think I’m gonna start publicly going by ‘Khalid’ now.”

Dimitri was taken aback. “What? _Here?_ Why?” he asked. “I know we have all learned something about being honest and open with people, but it could be dangerous to reveal that you’re…”

“No, I have to.” Claude shook his head. He lifted his hand and splayed his fingers out, then curled them inward into little hooks. “See? I’m not ‘clawed’ anymore.”

Dimitri chuckled, then covered his mouth with his hand to stifle it. That was a worse joke than anything Alois had ever come up with. Once he was sure he wouldn’t laugh, he said, “Claude, that is… the worst joke I have ever heard.”

Claude gave him a sly grin. “But you laughed.”

“Because it _wasn’t_ funny. That was a _surprised_ laugh, not a—”

“Doesn’t matter. You still laughed.” He eyed the empty space on the floor where Dorothea had started teaching Petra to waltz. “Shame Teach isn’t here. The Alliance of Four Mouses just doesn’t feel complete without her.”

“Oh, right—where is she?” Dimitri asked, only just realizing that Professor Byleth wasn’t in the crowd. He should have noticed sooner. He was sure the cooks had noticed her absence, or more specifically, the absence of her notorious appetite. It was rumored she could share as many as five lunches a day with her students and nobody knew where she put it all.

“Down in Abyss with Captain Jeralt and a few of the other knights, seeing to it that Yuri’s people get the rest of the antidote.” Claude shifted on his feet and set a hand on his hip. “If there are as many people down there as Yuri says, they’ll probably need every last drop… so here’s to hoping we’ll never need it again.”

“I am surprised you aren’t down there exploring.”

“Patience, Dimitri. Plenty of time for that stuff later.” He patted his stomach. “Besides, this is our first proper meal in a month. I’m not missing it for the world. Oh, but when I _do_ head back down there, wanna come with me?”

Dimitri looked at the grin Claude was offering him. “My apologies,” he said, crossing his arms, “but I believe I will want to stay away from that place for a while. I have had enough of it for now.”

“Gotcha. You know what I kinda regret about being human again?”

“That you didn’t take the opportunity to use your size to sneak through the monastery and peek at Seteth’s collection of banned books while you were a mouse?”

“Oh, no, I did that plenty of—I mean, yes, yes, I missed a _golden_ opportunity there; I’m just kicking myself over it. But also…” He looked at Dimitri, his eyes wide and sad and brimming with pathos. Dimitri had never noticed how _green_ his eyes were before, mostly on account of having spent the past month colorblind. “I gave you plenty of pets and scritches when you needed them, and you didn’t even scratch behind my ears _once.”_

Dimitri struggled to find the right words to reply to that. “…What?”

“I’m just saying, I feel like in our friendship, I gave a lot more than I got.”

Maybe it was just those puppy-dog eyes of his working their magic, but Dimitri actually felt _guilty_ about what Claude had said to him. “I—I am sorry, but I did not expect—I mean…” Why did his collar feel so much tighter around his neck all of a sudden? “You know the Blaiddyd bloodline possesses incredible strength, and I have not always been in _control_ of that strength, so… I am afraid I am not quite, er, physically affectionate. I learned not to be one a very long time ago. I did not mean the slightest offense.”

Claude gave him a dejected look.

“I could do it for you _now_ if—”

“No, no, that would be weird.” He crossed his arms. “Anyway, I’m not _that_ offended. I’ll forgive you… _if…”_

Dimitri didn’t like the sound of that _if._

 _“If_ you let me teach you an Almyran dance.”

“I haven’t danced in a very long time,” he told Claude.

“Don’t worry. It’s nothing like those stodgy dances you Fódlan nobles do,” Claude replied, watching Dorothea and Petra stumble a bit as they glided across the makeshift dance floor. “It’s very energetic. It’s like sparring, except everyone wins!”

“Everybody _does_ win in a sparring match. Even if you are defeated, you still learn from your mistakes and become stronger for it.”

“Okay, then Almyran dancing is _exactly_ like sparring. You’ll love it.”

Dimitri sighed. “Perhaps another time.”

“Seriously, though, what’s wrong? If you tell me, I’ll tell you another one of my secrets.”

“I know enough of your secrets.”

“You’ll want to know this one, trust me,” Claude said with one of his maddening little winks.

Relenting, he glanced furtively around the room to make sure that everybody nearby was too busy making merry to listen in, then leaned in very close to Claude. “Claude, when we pulled off that ambush on Anselm,” he whispered, “did you hear what Cornelia said to me?”

“Something about your stepmother and Duscur?” Claude stroked the scruff of his chin thoughtfully. “I caught a bit of it. You don’t _believe_ her, do you?”

“I knew I shouldn’t, but nonetheless, it weighed heavily on my mind. So I wrote a letter to Rodrigue—er, Lord Fraldarius inquiring as to what had happened to her on that day.”

“How’d you manage that?”

“It was a very small letter, but I tried to make it legible. A few days ago, I received a response from him. He said he could not discuss such a matter in writing and that he would visit Garreg Mach in person to speak to me about it. I am sure he is not far behind his letter; he could arrive within the week.”

“Okay. That’s not exactly a heartening response.”

“I know. That is why the possibility weighs so heavily on my mind. To think that such a kind woman could have been working for them… that she could have been culpable for such a tragedy.” Dimitri found his gaze drifting back to Edelgard.

He felt sick recounting his troubles. All of his memories of his stepmother had been good ones, even the times when she had been so distant, gazing out the window with her sewing needles in her lap with a thousand-yard stare, that he had not seemed to exist to her at all. But with Rodrigue’s cryptic message, Cornelia’s words now hung in his mind now like the fruit of a poisoned tree, daring him to partake of it. Could her death have been faked? Could she have been like Edelgard, coerced? Or worse, could she have been the mastermind behind the death of his father, her own husband, who had so kindly taken her in when she had been exiled from Adrestia?

“Then think of the other possibilities instead. Maybe he couldn’t say much in writing because your mother’s been hiding somewhere in the mountains and he can’t jeopardize her location.” Claude shrugged. “I know jumping to conclusions is what you’re good at, but maybe try to look before you leap.”

Dimitri let out a heavy sigh. If only it were that easy.

“Either way, it’s not the kind of thing you should have on your mind on a night like this. Wanna have the next dance?”

“I suppose you’re right—”

The next thing he knew, Claude’s hand was gripping his wrist and his eyes were the brightest he’d ever seen them.

Dimitri could hardly say anything in protest before Claude pulled him into the makeshift dance floor and started leading him along. Claude had been right—this was _not_ like the ballroom dances Edelgard had taught him all those years ago. Even once he’d gotten over his initial disorientation, he still struggled to keep up. Mercifully, though, the dance kept him occupied enough that his troubled thoughts fell by the wayside; following Claude’s footwork demanded his total concentration. How in the Goddess’ name was he so effortlessly graceful and nimble when everyone else, himself included, was still taking great pains not to fall flat on their faces with every step they took?

Still, it was exhilarating. It kept his body and mind occupied, although he often found his attention divided between the movements of Claude’s feet across the makeshift dance floor and the grin on his face, and to his amazement, he found himself having _fun._ A few notes of scattered applause rang out across the dining hall. _“Hey, Dimitri!”_ Sylvain called out. _“Give him a dagger!”_

More flustered than words could describe, Dimitri lost his balance and swept Claude’s feet out from underneath him; the two of them collapsed to the floor in a tangle of arms and legs.

“Sorry,” Claude said as Dimitri sputtered profuse apologies at him. “My timing got thrown off; it’s hard to keep the tempo in your head without the music, and where would I find a qanoun and someone to play it this far west of Fódlan’s Throat?” He looked up. “Want some lessons, too, Princess?”

As he pulled himself free of Claude’s legs, Dimitri looked up and saw Edelgard standing over him, her arms crossed. She reached down and offered him her hand. “I thought I taught you better than that, Dimitri,” she said coolly, but despite her posture and tone there was a pleasant, if a bit coy, smile on her face.

He took it and pulled himself up. “Sorry; I am still adjusting to being human.”

“So you won’t be needing remedial lessons?”

“No, most certainly not, Professor Edelgard. Thank you.”

A pink tinge spread across her pale cheeks.

“Can we talk?” he asked her. “Outside?”

Edelgard looked back toward the table she’d been sitting at, now with a her-shaped hole between Bernadetta and Hubert. “We may,” she said, “but don’t keep me. For once, I’m enjoying myself.”

The two of them slipped out of the dining hall and into the courtyard, leaving behind the soft, warm light of the hall’s chandeliers and lamps for the cold, dark monastery grounds. The sun had already set, and while the northern winds no longer blew as strongly down the mountains, the air had only gotten colder as of late. The moon, a waning half moon, was rising in the darkening violet sky. _“Here’s to Bernie-Bear, the best damn archer in Garreg Mach!”_ Caspar’s voice rang out amid the muffled sound of indistinct revelry bleeding through the door.

Edelgard shivered and clutched her arms.

“El… do you remember our mother?” Dimitri asked her. His voice came out more strained than he would have liked.

A crestfallen look flashed across Edelgard’s face; for a second, her lip trembled. “I… no,” she said, shaking her head. “Not much at all. The last time I saw her was before I was taken to Fhirdiad.”

“Did your… ‘allies’ ever speak of her? Of what had happened to her in Duscur—”

She frowned. “You’re still tying me to that atrocity?” she asked, exasperated.

“That is not what I meant,” Dimitri said. “But if they had ever said anything about her…”

“As far as I knew, my mother vanished. In Fhirdiad, my uncle said she had to go somewhere no one would ever find her. After that, even before Duscur, he spoke of her as though she were dead. No one else among those who slither in the dark so much as spoke her name in my presence.” Her tone was terse, her words guarded.

“I see.”

She hugged her arms, clasping them in her hands. “I heard what Cornelia said, too, Dimitri.”

“Do you believe her?”

“Do _you?”_

“I wish I didn’t, but I am not particularly heartened by what I’ve heard from Lord Rodrigue about that day,” Dimitri confessed, feeling his heart wrench as though someone had ensnared it on a fishhook. “I will speak with him about it in person soon, but… I fear what I may learn—if anything at all,” he said. “Whatever I discover, I will tell you. You and I both deserve the truth.”

Edelgard bowed her head and laid her hand on one of the rosebushes, running a gloved finger across a thorny stem. “Thank you.”

_“Edelgard? Dimitri?”_

A familiar voice cut through the night air. Edelgard stiffened. A crimson drop of blood, nearly black in the dim light, welled up on her fingertip; for a split second before she regained her composure she seemed almost frightened.

Expecting trouble, Dimitri turned his head in the direction of the voice and found a man with long, swept-back black hair and the ornate crimson riding garb of an imperial nobleman standing between two hedges, lit by the soft amber glow of the nearby lantern. He relaxed; it was nothing. “Ah,” he said to the intruder, “Uncle Volkhard… what brings you to Garreg Mach at this hour?”

“What a pleasant surprise,” Edelgard said.

Volkhard chuckled. “The pleasant surprise is seeing you human again! When last I’d heard, you and your classmates had been…”

“That, er, _situation_ was actually resolved this very morning,” Dimitri said.

“How fortuitous.” A smile crossed Volkhard’s face. He stroked the short, thin beard that traced his chin thoughtfully. “I arrived in town just a few hours ago and intended to save my visit for the morning, but alas, my impatience got the better of me, so I decided to ride to the monastery.”

“You must be tired,” Edelgard said.

He held out his arms. “Not tired enough for a hug from my favorite niece.”

She glanced at Dimitri. “What about your favorite nephew?”

“It is fine,” Dimitri assured her. “I am not, er, physically affectionate.”

“Yes, and I am not keen on having my spine snapped like a twig,” Volkhard said with a genial smile. He kept his arms splayed. “But El, you _always_ give the best hugs.”

Edelgard relented, moved toward him (with, Dimitri noticed, a great deal of hesitation that she tried very hard to mask), and the two of them wrapped their arms around each other in a way that might have vaguely resembled a hug in the right light (and the half-moon above was not the right light).

If he hadn’t known any better, Dimitri would have said that neither Volkhard nor Edelgard liked each other very much.

“I would have departed as soon as the Archbishop’s missive regarding that, er, situation arrived in Enbarr,” Volkhard said once he and Edelgard had broken apart, “but a pressing matter concerning my regency has held my attention these past few weeks.”

There was a flicker of unease on Edelgard’s face. “My father? How is he?”

“I am afraid his health took a turn for the worse when word of your disappearance reached him, although he has much improved since word of your _re_ appearance reached him. We should make a trip to Enbarr soon—he will be delighted to see you in the flesh.”

“And we should talk in the morning,” Edelgard said, “once you have rested, dear uncle. So will you be staying the night in the monastery?”

“Of course. Yes, I will be staying in one of the unused monks’ quarters.” He yawned. “We can meet for tea tomorrow.” And with that, he began to walk away, swiftly heading across the courtyard. Before he could vanish behind another hedge, though, he paused and glanced back over his shoulder. “Oh, and by the way, Edelgard—when did you discover your relation to Dimitri?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.

“We had the most incredible adventure, Uncle,” Dimitri said, “and—”

He became aware that Edelgard was glaring at him. When her lilac eyes were so hard and cold like that, she bore more than a passing resemblance to her uncle.

“—we got to talking,” she interjected, “and learned that we _both_ had an Uncle Volkhard. What were the chances?”

“Well, you’ve certainly grown close,” Volkhard said. “Already finishing each others’ sentences. My, my. Do take care. We shall have tea in my lodgings tomorrow, Edelgard. I will come and collect you.”

Edelgard nodded. “Yes, Uncle.”

“I would be delighted to join you,” Dimitri offered, but Volkhard seemed not to hear him and simply departed into the darkness, vanishing beyond the hedges of the courtyard. He looked over to Edelgard. Her hands had crumpled into fists and shook as they hung at her sides.

“Thank you for talking to me, Dimitri,” Edelgard said, turning on her heel. “I must speak with Hubert now.” As she passed him by, she gripped his arm tightly and leaned in toward him. _“Don’t trust Uncle Volkhard,”_ she hissed, and then she stomped off before he could get a word in edgewise.

 _“Edie! So this is where you slunk away to!”_ Dorothea called out, her voice ringing in the cool night air. She blocked the entrance to the dining hall in front of Edelgard, her hands placed on her hips, though the smile she wore was far from stern. Bernadetta, Petra, and Lysithea were lingering behind her. “We’ve been talking, and you and Bern owe us a long-overdue slumber party.” She planted her index finger in Edelgard’s chest decisively.

“We’ve slept together plenty of times this past month,” Edelgard retorted, taking a flustered step backward. Her cheeks were as red as beets.

Dorothea sighed and ran a hand through her lustrous brown hair. “Do you even know what a slumber party _is,_ Edie? We’re going to do each others’ makeup and braid our hair and talk about boys.”

“Yes, of course I know what a slumber party is,” Edelgard replied, though from her tone and demeanor it seemed she was as unaccustomed to them as Dimitri was.

“Besides, we’ve got to welcome our newest classmate to the Black Eagles properly,” Dorothea coyly added, trotting Lysithea out in front of her like a show pony.

A smile flickered on Edelgard’s face. “Do you mind if I have a word with Hubert first?”

“Aw, your first night as a human and you’re already back to your scheming old self.” Dorothea patted Edelgard on the cheek. Dimitri watched the rest of Edelgard’s face turn as red as her cape. “Alright. Come down to my room when you’re ready and bring your bedroll and a pillow.”

Edelgard slipped past the girls and back into the dining hall; Dorothea and her entourage headed for the dormitories, leaving Dimitri alone in the courtyard.

As he walked back to the dining hall after Edelgard, he reflected what she had said to him and felt his blood turn as cold as the night air of the Red Wolf Moon.

Uncle Volkhard was one of _them._

He broke out into a run and stormed into the dining hall. He headed straight for Claude, who was now going through the motions of another foreign dance with Petra at his side, and grabbed him by the arm.

“So, uh, this is a dance to the rice spirit, you said— _Ow!”_ Claude switched his attention from Petra to Dimitri, eyeing the fingers digging welts into his bicep. “You don’t have to demonstrate that prodigious Blaiddyd strength to me, Dimi—”

“Claude, I need you,” Dimitri blurted out. “Can you come with me to my room?”

Claude blinked, dumbfounded, his eyelashes fluttering. “Okay.”

* * *

Edelgard had trouble sleeping that night.

She stared up at Dorothea’s ceiling, shrouded in darkness, lying flat on her back with her bedroll between her and the floor rug, hands folded over her stomach. The evening’s revelries had long since ceased.

The slumber party, as it turned out, hadn’t been much of a party. Bernadetta had faded fast and fallen asleep first, simply too exhausted from being around so many people for so long to keep going; in truth, Edelgard had felt a little guilty for not putting her foot down and saying no to Dorothea, although her being here might have been the one reason she wasn’t meeting with Thales right now.

Still, the night had been fun. For the first time Bernadetta had allowed Edelgard to comb her messy hair into something more presentable and let Dorothea help her with makeup, even though she typically shrank from such things due to her father’s past cruelty and domineering. Now she was curled up at Edelgard’s side, her chest gently rising and falling in the stable rhythm of a deep sleep. Petra slept cross-legged with her back against the wall, and Dorothea laid with her head in her lap, her waterfall of brown hair tied into ornate pleats courtesy of Petra’s nimble fingers. Lysithea, as the newest recruit to the Black Eagles and the guest of honor at this slumber party, was allowed the privilege of sleeping in Dorothea’s bed. Everyone except Edelgard was fast asleep.

Of course, sleep eluded Edelgard. How could she sleep knowing that Thales was in this very monastery, waiting for her?

And he insisted on having tea with her instead of his usual late-night trysts. Perhaps it was a form of torture. Or perhaps he intended to visit her in the middle of the night instead, catching her off guard.

She and Hubert had theorized that the only reason Thales hadn’t killed her yet was because he couldn’t be certain whether she was Edelgard or Anselm. That meant she would have to pretend to be Anselm pretending to be Edelgard long enough for Thales to spare her life until he left her alone—or until she’d killed him, whichever came first. Evidently, she’d been doing a good enough job of it so far—or perhaps he’d simply been hamstrung by Dimitri’s presence and forced to keep up appearances.

What if he never let her out of her sight after this? What if he expected her to leave the monastery and return with him to Enbarr? What if she had to do more heinous deeds for him, not to further her goals but simply to keep her cover and keep herself alive? What kind of monstrous things did he expect of Anselm? Would she be forced to make enemies of Dimitri and Claude, or even Byleth?

She had to calm herself down; she was catastrophizing. There was still a little bit of residual mouse left in her, she supposed, something that still deep down thought of itself as _prey._ Despairing over the worst-case scenario was Bernie’s job, planning for the worst-case was Hubert’s job, and surviving it was _her_ job. Subterfuge was still second nature to her.

Restless, she pulled herself up to her feet. With four people sleeping on the floor, there wasn’t much free space to move around, and Edelgard had to take a very wide stride over Bernadetta’s slumbering body to reach Dorothea’s desk, on which she’d placed her neatly folded uniform. Fumbling in the dark, she rifled through her clothes until she found something hard and sharp.

_Cut your own path, El._

The dagger. A slim, short, straight blade, sharp on both edges, with a gold hilt and a smooth, worn hilt that perfectly fit her hand. Dimitri’s parting gift to her all those years ago. Even after she’d forgotten his name, his face, his voice, she’d still clung to the memory of this dagger for strength.

She clutched the dagger tightly, let her fingers curl around the hilt, and then slipped it back into her clothes. Just knowing it was still there soothed her.

As long as she had that dagger when she met Thales, everything would turn out okay.

There was a white flash outside the window. Edelgard looked up and fixed her gaze on the window, every muscle in her body tensing. _Thales?_

There was a tap on the window.

 _“Psst! Hey!”_ a familiar voice hissed, muffled by the glass, barely audible. In all honesty, Edelgard was still adjusting to not having a mouse’s sharp ears anymore; she was still being surprised by what she _couldn’t_ hear.

Taking a deep breath as quietly as she could, Edelgard took out the dagger again and crept across the floor. She’d recently gotten much better at magic, too, under Lysithea and Hubert’s tutelage; at least she could defend herself.

A ghostly face popped up in the window. Wide, frightened eyes lay under a mop of rusty, carrot-colored hair. A teardrop-shaped tattoo ran down one cheek.

 _“Psst! Hey, Edel! Over here!”_ Kronya whispered, rapping her ashen knuckles on the glass.

Edelgard flung out her hand and prepared to cast a spell.

Kronya vehemently shook her head, panicked, and tapped on the glass again.

Still primed to strike, Edelgard inched closer to the window and propped it open just a hair, enough so that she could hear Kronya and Kronya could hear her. If the assassin so much as stuck a finger through the window, Edelgard’s dagger would find it.

 _“Don’t attack me! Thales is here!”_ Kronya whispered.

“I know,” Edelgard hissed.

_“He’s gonna find out I killed Solon. He’s gonna kill me!”_

“I know.”

_“You gotta help me!”_

“Why?”

 _“Because I gotta help_ you, _or he’ll kill me!”_

“Who, Thales?”

Kronya’s eyes darted from side to side. _“Y-Yes, but, um… also…”_

It was then that Edelgard caught sight of a little mouse perched on Kronya’s shoulder. The mouse’s fur was so covered in blood that in the moonlight his pelt was as black as the sky, and a little mouse-skull helmet was perched atop his head. He held a very tiny scythe and had the sharp edge of the blade pressed to the side of her neck.

Kronya looked down at the mouse, then back to Edelgard. _“He says he’ll kill me if I don’t help you.”_

The mouse squeaked.

 _“Actually, he says he’ll_ definitely _kill me if I don’t help you, but if I_ do _help you, he just_ might _kill me.”_

Edelgard crept to the window, silently so as not to disturb anyone’s sleep, and looked down at the homicidal mouse. “Hello, Jeritza.”

Jeritza bowed. “Once more, I and the Death Knight are both at your service, Lady Edelgard,” he squeaked. “Give the word and I shall swim in this wretch’s blood.”

Edelgard was put at ease. She didn’t trust Kronya, but she _did_ trust Jeritza, as long as he wasn’t subsumed by his uncontrollable Death Knight persona.

“Please don’t give the word,” Kronya said. “Be like Bernie. Sweet little Bernie-Bear. Be like your stupid dumbass friend Ferdie. Show a little compassion to a down-on-her-luck former assassin.”

Edelgard crossed her arms. _“Former_ assassin?”

“I wanna turn my life around,” said Kronya. It was the most unconvincing lie Edelgard had ever heard. “I’m through with the Agarthans. They’re a bunch of backstabbing weirdos.”

Edelgard cleared her throat.

“Hey, I’ve got an idea!” Kronya kneaded her ashen hands together and grinned. It was less an elated or excited grin and more a manic please-don’t-kill-me grin. “We’ll kill Thales together and solve both our problems! And then I swear you’ll never, ever, ever, ever see me again! I’ll go live on a beach somewhere and get a tan!”

Edelgard sighed. “Go around to the door.”

“Thank you, Edel! You won’t regret it!” Kronya ducked out of sight. Edelgard heard the bushes rustle. She closed the window again, stopping the cold draft drifting into the room.

A few agonizingly tense minutes passed before there came a knock on the door. Edelgard crept over to it and opened it just a crack, her dagger at the ready in case of foul play.

“Okay,” Kronya said, “so what’s the plan, Edel? Ooh! How about, Jeritza sneaks into his room while he’s sleeping and slices his Achilles tendons, then we pop up and scare him, and he tries to run away but can’t because we fucked up his ankles, and then we gouge out his eyes and cut off his dick!”

Edelgard opened the door the rest of the way and slipped out, gingerly shutting the door so as not to disturb anyone. Before the door swung shut completely, she caught one last glimpse of Bernadetta’s silhouette. She hoped she slept well. Bernadetta had done enough for her. Enough for now. She deserved to have a good night’s sleep tonight. And if luck was on her side, they would both sleep well tomorrow. Tomorrow, and all the days after it.

“No,” Edelgard said to Kronya, “because I’m not entirely sure Thales sleeps. The plan is that we go get Hubert and come up with a plan.”

“Ooh, wait, wait, can we bring Bernie with us?”

“No.”

“Why not? Don’t you _looooove_ her, Edel?”

“First, she needs her sleep. Second, she made me promise not to pull off a plan like this again, so I can’t involve her.” She led Kronya down the lawn and up the stairs to the dormitories’ second floor. “And,” she added, “if you ever call me ‘Edel’ again, I will—”

She found Hubert standing in the hall as though he were waiting for her, and Claude and Dimitri were standing with him. Hubert caught sight of Kronya and went as pale as the moon. “What in the fresh hell,” he hissed, “is _this?”_

Edelgard smiled. “Hubert, I have good news. We have a Death Knight again.” She gestured to Jeritza, who was still threatening Kronya with imminent death.

“What am I,” Kronya protested, “chopped liver?”

“Yes,” Edelgard, Hubert, Dimitri, and Claude all said in unison.

“Let’s all step inside my quarters,” Hubert said. “Kronya, I have some serums I would like to test on you, if you don’t mind.” A smile crawled across his face. It was a smile Edelgard was very well acquainted with.

“I do,” Kronya said. Jeritza’s scythe pressed against her neck just lightly enough to almost draw a line of blood from her ash-gray skin. “I mean, not at all, Hubes!”

* * *

The night passed agonizingly quickly as Edelgard devised a plan with Hubert and Claude. Anxiety bit at her frayed nerves. This, she assumed, was part of Thales’ plan. Perhaps he was foregoing his usual style of trysts simply to ensure that she was as far off her game as possible. He wanted her tired, fretful, irritable, unable to keep her lies straight.

Before sunrise, Edelgard slipped back into Dorothea’s room, took her clothes and dagger, returned to her own bedroom, and dutifully waited for Thales to collect her.

The two of them sat in the sparsely furnished room Thales had spent the night in, both sitting politely at the table. Edelgard had supplied her own tea set—a teapot, saucers, and teacups crafted from fine white ceramic that had been a birthday gift from her father a few years back—to ensure that Thales couldn’t have done anything like coat the inside of her cup with poisonous powder. The tea was also hers—bergamot, her favorite—and the water came from the nearest well. She had heated the kettle with the flame magic she’d been learning from Lysithea, earning an impressed nod from Thales.

She took a sip of her tea and pretended to wince a little, wrinkling her nose a bit so it would seem she was taken aback by the taste.

“What is the matter, El?” Thales asked, smiling sweetly. “I thought bergamot tea was your favorite.”

“It was, once,” she said. “But _I_ haven’t enjoyed tea in a long, long time.”

“Ah, right, right. Yes, of course.” Thales took a sip from his own cup.

Edelgard supposed she would be more revolted by Thales’ mask of Volkhard von Arundel if she had any fond memories of the man whose face he’d stolen, but on the other hand, she wasn’t sure she could be any more revolted by him.

“Look at the two of us,” she said, “wearing masks.” This was it. Her true deception began here. “I wear her face well, don’t I? Even Hubert von Vestra has been taken in.”

Thales raised an eyebrow.

“And _you_ didn’t know, either, did you? I’ve reproduced her mannerisms perfectly.”

“That you have, Ansy. That you have.” He chuckled. “It must be difficult to be human again after seven long years. But you wear your guise as naturally as any of my agents. Why, for a second when we met last night, I thought you were El herself.”

“It takes some adjusting. But everyone else is adjusting as well. It doesn’t raise anybody’s suspicion if I act as though I can still feel my tail.” Edelgard took another sip of tea.

Thales smiled. “So, Ansy, how was your… slumber party last night?”

Her throat closed up. Of course. Of course he’d still been watching her after he’d left. She could only hope he hadn’t heard what she’d whispered to Dimitri.

She swallowed her tea. “I’ll admit I’ve never been to one before.” Had he spent all night watching her? Had he heard her speak to Hubert in the dining hall? Had he watched her lie awake last night? Had he been watching when Kronya found her? How much did he know?

“Your hair looks cute in that braid.”

Edelgard’s hand impetuously rose to the tightly-woven pleats Petra had put in her hair last night, tracing their contours against her scalp. “So it does. It is a traditional braid from Brigid.”

“Fascinating,” Thales said, a note of dry mockery in his voice. He had absolutely zero interest in the subject—the people of Fódlan were like ants to him, and people outside of Fódlan even less than ants. He took another draught from his teacup, then refilled his cup from the kettle sitting on the table between them. “I take it you’re dealing with your new… anatomy well.”

“It’s true that I’d gotten used to having a tail these past few years, but I’m making do without. The harder part is how deadened my senses of hearing and smell have become. I feel almost deaf, and food turns to ash in my mouth.”

“And the _other_ changes?”

Edelgard allowed herself to squirm in place. “Embarrassing, but I’ve managed.”

“So, tell me, my new Flame Emperor, what happened to Edelgard?”

“Could it be any more obvious?” Edelgard smirked. “I killed that coward and took her body, just as planned.”

“Tell me.”

Edelgard told him what had happened. She told him how Anselm had started the chain of events that had led to Bernadetta and herself becoming mice (from Anselm’s point of view, of course), the assault on Mousehaven and the subsequent death of Myson and routing of the pint-sized Agarthan military, the death of Solon and capture of Cornelia… and her story ended, of course, with the utter fiction of Anselm cornering Edelgard and taking her body for himself.

“So,” Thales said, crossing his arms, “how did Solon die, again?”

“The Fell Star slew him,” Edelgard lied.

“And Cornelia?”

“She was taken prisoner by the Knights of Seiros.”

Thales seemed almost surprised, but the slackness of his jaw soon passed. “She will be released soon enough. I expect she will corroborate your story.”

“Of course.”

“What about Kronya?”

Another test. Maybe Thales knew that Kronya was alive, though Edelgard doubted that Kronya would have confessed to murdering her superior. Thales was a man who demanded loyalty, though he promised none in return.

“She went missing in the assault on our citadel,” Edelgard answered, knowing that any answer was equally better than no answer at all.

“Pity. I hope she turns up. She was unflinchingly loyal. So…” Thales rapped his fingernails on the table. “How, may I ask, did you carry out the soul transference and revive Edelgard’s corpse with Solon dead?”

“I absorbed his Crest Stone into my body before he breathed his last,” Edelgard said. “His knowledge rests in me now.”

“Good. So you will be able to fill in for him and continue his experiments.”

“Will I have time for that while I’m waging war across Fódlan?”

Thales chuckled. “No, no, I suppose you won’t. I will have to take charge of the war, then.”

Edelgard felt her hand curl into a fist involuntarily. She nearly dropped her teacup. _“What?”_

“As Imperial Regent, I have the executive authority of the Emperor. That grants me the privilege of filling in for _your_ future duties as well. Solon’s work is important. _Somebody_ must continue it. The planning and waging of the war will be our responsibility; you will concern yourself with creating weapons to destroy the Immaculate One and acting as a figurehead in your spare time.”

“Hmph. I was hoping to slaughter the Immaculate One with my own hands and bathe in the blood of her armies,” Edelgard said, feeling sweat gather on her brow, “but if that is the role I must play…”

Thales finished his tea. “Ah. I understand you are less than enthused, Ansy, but I am grateful for your obedience. Edelgard would have spat in my face by now.” He took a flask from within his coat and took a swig from it. “Pardon—I have a medicine I must take in the mornings.”

Edelgard suppressed a smirk. “Are you sick, Uncle?”

“You know how I get a cold these winter months. The seasons change too quickly for me. After all, in Shambhala, there are no seasons, no days, no nights, just endless expanses of time.”

“Edelgard was a weak fool,” Edelgard said, drinking the last dregs of tea in her cup. “A cowardly and sniveling little mouse to the end. She begged and pleaded with me to spare her wretched life. But no. I _earned_ this. So I took it from her.”

“She did love to pretend. Always playing the part of the fearlessly defiant, iron-willed bastion of strength. You should have heard the tongue-lashings she would give me. ‘There will be no salvation for your kind.’ ‘I shall see to it that you all burn.’ It was so endlessly amusing hearing her speak as though she were anything other than a puppet with strings fully in our grasp. Of course, though, we had to cut her loose eventually.”

Edelgard nodded, but inside, she could feel something heavy and hot writhing in her stomach like a tangle of venomous asps.

“I should have known it was all empty bravado. Of course, Edelgard rather fancied herself a great and noble freedom fighter, deigning to work with her most hated enemies for the sake of a better and brighter future for humanity no matter the cost to her soul. Her unearned pride wouldn’t have it any other way.” Thales made a flippant gesture with his free hand, then set aside his cup. “So I am glad that in the end, you helped her see herself for what she _was—_ nothing more than a victim helplessly caught in our machinations, a cog who dreamed fruitlessly of breaking the machine she had been built to serve.”

As Thales let out a scornful laugh, Edelgard struggled to keep her composure. Inside, she was aflame with rage. She wanted to sever this man’s head more now than ever, more than when he’d leered at her on the operating table, more than when he’d mocked her and her surviving siblings about the deaths of the ones she’d lost, more than after every ugly act he’d ordered her to do. She wanted to kill him and show him in his final moments that she was everything she believed she was—that she was the strong, unyielding leader who would unify Fódlan, free humanity from both Seiros’ tyranny and the machinations of the Agarthans, and create a world liberated from the thrall of unjust hierarchies and oppression.

She was not a helpless captive. She was not a tool for others to use. She was Edelgard von Hresvelg, and—

And she had to control herself. She couldn’t squirm or fidget, or even grit her teeth or clench her fists in anger—not here. She could scream out her rage later, exorcise it with an axe in the training hall when this was all over, but for now, she had to set her pride aside.

She laughed. She felt sick, but she laughed. She laughed with him, _at herself,_ pouring just as much scorn into her voice as there was in his.

“You know, your father is the same way,” Thales said, still chuckling. “It felt so good to destroy his pride. I commend you for doing the same to darling little El—I couldn’t be any prouder of you, my dear Ansy. You know, I’ve always thought of you as more my nephew than El was my niece; perhaps it was fate that your mother named you after my sister.”

Edelgard refused to let her anger show. No matter what he said, she couldn’t let her true feelings bleed through. She could feel the pressure building up inside her; it was almost painful. Her stomach wrenched, her head throbbed—

She could reach across the table and kill him. Two hands around his throat, with the power of the Crest of Flames surging through her muscles—she could pop his head clean off before he could cast a spell to defend herself.

No, that was a foolish, feral, instinctual way of thinking. She had to cling to her human sense of reason. She knew how strong Thales was—the Agarthans respected only power and cunning, and to be their leader, he had to have both in spades.

“That just leaves one more thing,” Thales said. “Anselm, show me your Crests.”

Edelgard should have expected this. Of course, Thales wanted to make sure her body—and the two Crests tattooed into its blood—was fully intact with all of the gifts he had given it. She held out her hand, palm upward, and focused on manifesting her Crest. A magic seal made from arcs of glittering reddish light shimmered in the air above her hand, and traced within it was the leaf-shaped emblem of Seiros.

“The minor Crest of Seiros,” she intoned, “which Edelgard was born with.” She focused on her other Crest, and the shape within the seal transformed into the complex network of interlaced, butterfly-wing loops that marked the insignia of the Crest of Flames. “And the major Crest of Flames, the gift that you and Solon gave this body. Both intact and at their full power.”

Thales raised his eyebrow. “…And?”

Edelgard furrowed her brow, and the instant she did that, she remembered—Anselm had a special Crest! She’d only seen it once—that strange hybrid of the Crest of Seiros and Crest of Flames. Presumably, it jumped along with his consciousness from one host body to another, either naturally or due to whatever ritual Solon had been doing to raise corpses for the Plague Rat.

She’d already made her mistake. That moment of confusion—that single crease running across her forehead, a single quizzical flash in her eyes—was more than enough to condemn her.

“Oh, Edelgard,” Thales said, shaking his head slowly and sadly. “I’d had a feeling it was you.”

Edelgard clenched her jaw. Her gaze flitted to the window, then to the door.

“Don’t run,” he said to her, holding up his hand. “Don’t run, or you’ll never get the antidote to the poison you just drank.”

Fear flashed through her mind. A sickly knot seized her stomach and the hair on the back of her neck stood on end. He had to be bluffing. He’d drunk tea from the same pot, and Edelgard had used her own tea set. He couldn’t have slipped something in without poisoning himself as well.

“Allow me to say what you’re thinking. ‘How could he have poisoned me without poisoning himself?’” Thales grinned, twisting his mask into a smile as hateful as it was triumphant. “The truth is, I poisoned myself as well…” He reached for his flask, let it peek out from under his lapel, and set it back in his coat pocket. “But, like I said, I always take my medicine in the morning.”

Edelgard felt a shiver crawl under her skin and the nausea in her stomach grew stronger.

“It’s a poison I think you’re quite familiar with, albeit specially designed by Solon to have a delayed reaction,” he said. “It should start taking effect quite soon; if you run away, you won’t even make it down the hall before I catch you.”

A feverish wave of pins and needles swept through her, alternating hot and cold. Edelgard reflexively clutched her arms tightly enough that her fingernails bit through her sleeves and into her skin. Her breath kept catching in her throat. The color was bleeding out of her vision, first red, then everything else. Her pulse sang in her ears. This couldn’t be happening again. Not now, not _here,_ not in front of _him_ of all people. She’d already had Byleth and Jeralt give what was left of the antidote to Yuri to use on his people down in Abyss, though she doubted there was enough for all of the denizens of that underground haven; she couldn’t be confident there was any of it left.

She looked back at the window, at the dawn light creeping across the grassy lawn outside. The _empty_ grassy lawn.

“If you’re expecting some grand cavalry to ride up to your rescue,” Thales said, “then allow me to disabuse you of the notion. Seteth kindly picked out a room for me, and I kindly picked out another as soon as he left me to my business, just in case a girl with delusions of grandeur decided to spend her night snooping and scheming. And when I woke up this morning, I found a clever little mouse scampering across the floor.”

That had been the plan. Jeritza would find Thales’ room and report back to Hubert with its location. “Jeritza…” Edelgard mumbled, dumbfounded.

“Of course, I disposed of the vermin,” Thales said. “I’m afraid your constant companion Hubert is not coming for you.” His brow furrowed in mock sympathy. “Now, Edelgard, I will let you have the antidote, but first you are going to bow to me, submit yourself to me, and swear an oath to never defy me again, neither in word, nor deed, nor thought,” he said.

“I—I’d rather be a mouse,” she spat, still quaking, her toes curling in her boots and teeth grinding in nervous anticipation for the changes that were to come. “Forever. I’d rather be that— _forever_ —than serve you. If my dreams die either way, then I would rather be useless to the world than useful to you.”

“Oh, but to be defiant here would not be an escape,” Thales said. “I won’t kill you, Edelgard. I went through all this trouble to have Anselm take your body because I _can’t_ let it go to waste. No, I won’t kill you—I’ll _tame_ you. I’ll take you back with me to Enbarr in a little wooden box with airholes drilled in it, and then I’ll put you in a titanium cage with an unbreakable lock. And then you will live there, in a cage on the bedside table in my chambers in the Imperial Palace. You will live there for as long as it takes for you to become compliant.”

He leaned in, his eyes widening, gleaming to reflect the shining light of his megalomania. His voice became a snakelike hiss. “Did you know that before I left Enbarr, your father told me that he _loved_ me? That he _forgave_ me? I _made_ him that way, Edelgard. I broke his spirit, and then I showed him kindness through his lowest points, and I _made_ him love me. And I will make _you_ love me, too. You will love me because I will be the one who feeds you, takes care of you, pets you, brushes your fur, cleans your cage, and keeps you warm and cozy in the winter months. I will make you depend on me for everything, and you will come to thank me for the smallest kindness. I will shower you with affection until you drown in it. I will use Agarthan technology to keep you alive and young for five years, ten years, _fifteen_ years longer than a mouse’s natural lifespan—however long it takes until you and I are a happy little family.”

Edelgard felt her stomach churn. Poison or revulsion—or both—it made no difference. Thales leered at her with sick and sadistic glee twisting the stolen face of her uncle Volkhard and licked his lips greedily.

“And when you truly love your uncle Volkhard with all your heart,” Thales concluded, _“then_ I will restore to you your human form. I know it will work, Edelgard, because your big brother Ansy and your dying dotard of a father were my test subjects, and I can now say with complete and utter certainty that _my tests were an overwhelming success.”_

Sick with fear, Edelgard did the only other thing she could do. She drew the dagger she’d kept with her and held it to her own throat. Dimitri’s dagger—the one that would cut a path to her future. It just so happened, after everything, that the path she would ultimately have to cut lay over her own grave. This would be the end—but it would be the end on _her_ terms.

And when that cold steel fell against her throat, suddenly, she wasn’t afraid anymore.

“Then I see no reason to let my life continue,” she said. “You’ve already lost, Thales. Your highest lieutenants are dead or captured. Your ranks are in disarray. You’ve lost your ultimate weapon. And without them, without _me,_ any army you raise will be crushed, no matter how much of your blasted technology you arm them with, because you will be fighting against Claude and Dimitri and Byleth and…” The blade nipped at her skin; she felt a warm trickle of blood ooze down the hollow of her throat and meet the contour of her collarbone. “You might cut a swath of destruction through Fódlan, but you will never win, and in a few generations after Seiros has rooted you out, the world will forget the pain you caused it.”

Thales leaped to his feet. “Do you work for _Seiros_ now?!” he snarled.

“No—I’ve just decided which of my enemies I hate _more.”_ Edelgard let the dagger dig just a bit deeper, a twisted and masochistic smile growing across her face. “At this moment, it’s you.”

“You traitorous little whelp!” Thales snarled, throwing the tea set off the table with a wave of his hand, shattering Edelgard’s precious fine ceramic set into tiny shards of elegant ceramic that littered the floor. The tea leaves he’d put in the kettle scattered in wet clumps. He reached out to her, his fingers curled like wicked claws.

Edelgard pressed the dagger harder against her neck. She could feel it sawing a deeper gash into her skin. The warmth running down her chest grew stronger, and the coppery scent of her own blood filled her nostrils. She was going to do it. Just a hair’s-breadth more pressure, a flick of her wrist, and she would slit her own throat. She swallowed a lump in her throat and felt the muscles undulate against the blade of her dagger. “Don’t move. Sit. Or I’ll ruin my body.”

Thales was shaking. “You won’t. You’re bluffing. You cling to life, Edelgard. It’s all you know how to do.”

“The same way you’re bluffing about the poison?” Edelgard raised an eyebrow. “Because you said it would start taking effect before I could even run across the hall. But I think I could have run all the way to the cathedral and back in the time we’ve been chatting. You wanted to break me. You wanted to frighten me. You wanted me to beg. But Edelgard von Hresvelg does not _beg,_ Thales, not to a monster like you. I never begged to you before and I won’t do it now. My life is my own; I would rather destroy it than see it fall into your hands.”

His outstretched hand became a clenched fist; anger wrinkled his face. “How dare you speak to me like that!”

“What affords you your haughty attitude?” she retorted, her grin widening with confidence. “Did you think I wouldn’t have realized by now that _I_ am the most important person in this room?” She stood up. “And that’s not all. I’m not alone. I’m never alone now, not anymore. I don’t need you anymore.”

“You’ll never destroy Seiros without us,” Thales shot back. “What allies could ever replace _us?_ This continent will be forever enslaved to that monster’s will because _you_ did not do as you were told!” Dark flames flickered around his fists. “I only need your _living_ body,” he growled through gritted teeth. “But not your _intact_ body—”

The window shattered. Thales’ left arm snapped up and a quivering arrow appeared in one of his clenched fists, still vibrating from its sudden stop, its arrowhead quivering just a fraction of an inch away from his temple. His eyes were wide as saucers, showing off the lavender color of his irises—the lavender Volkhard had shared with his sister and that had been passed down to Edelgard.

“Jeritza didn’t report your location to Hubert,” Edelgard told him as he burned the arrow to ashes in his hand; the arrow fell from his clenched fist in two pieces, each severed end blackened and smoldering. “He reported it to _me._ The mouse you disposed of was just an ordinary mouse he planted to trick you. My sniper is lining up his next shot as we speak.”

He took a step back. “Hmph. It seems your faith in your friends,” he sneered, “will be your downfall.”

She kept the dagger against her throat. “And it seems your overconfidence will be yours. Move out of the way if you dare, but my knife will find my throat before your hands do.”

Another arrow zipped through the window; Thales caught it in his hand just as he had the first one and burned it to ash. He grinned and the telltale sparks of a warp spell began to coalesce around him. Edelgard panicked. He was _daring_ her to kill herself. And if he escaped, then she would never be safe. She’d spend the rest of her life, however short, looking over her shoulder until the next time he struck.

The third arrow buried itself in his temple.

He reeled back and let out a horrid screech, blood pouring down the left side of his face. The wound was deep: The arrow had quite obviously, judging by how little of the shaft protruded from his head, pierced his skull and penetrated deeply into his brain.

Now was her chance. Edelgard withdrew the dagger from her neck, conjured a fireball in her hand, and leaped over the table at him. Her hand burned red, and with a loud roar rushing through her bloodstream, the power of her Crest screamed at her. Her fiery hand collided against Thales’ face and her fingertips dug into his skin—pliant, soft, like wet clay—tearing through his disguise, torching the corpse-pale flesh underneath. His skin burned, blisters bubbling and popping, his agonized scream muffled by Edelgard’s palm as the full power of the Crest of Flames bled from her body into his.

Before he could retaliate or do anything to escape—although the damage to his brain probably hindered his spellcasting—she drove Dimitri’s dagger into the hollow of his throat. Blood poured in a torrent down his chest, soaking into his clothes, and with a ragged gurgle, Thales fell limply and lifelessly to the floor, his blood staining the chips of fine white ceramic littering the floor and mingling with the puddle of spilled tea from the shattered teapot.

Edelgard caught her breath, drained, her eyes fixed on Thales’ unmoving body. Her shoulders felt as though a thousand-pound weight had just been removed from each of them. Her chest heaved, her lungs burned. She could feel her knees wobble. A prickly, feverish wave was running under her skin.

“All those years you spent laughing at my defiance,” she spat. “That was for Ansy. Him, Burkhart, Pascal… all the others. May they rest in peace.”

She inched toward the window, shattered glass crunching under her boots, giving Thales’ body a passing glance every few seconds. She couldn’t trust him about anything, let alone whether he was alive or dead—especially after Solon had survived a knife to his back.

Still, she looked out the window, and just as she’d expected, she saw Dimitri, Claude, and Bernadetta standing across the lawn outside. Claude was holding his bow and had an arrow nocked to it; Dimitri and Bernadetta together were holding two halves of a silver longbow that had snapped right down the middle.

 _Bernadetta?_ What was _she_ doing here? Where was Hubert?

Edelgard stuck her arm out the window, mindful of the jagged shards of glass still clinging to the stone frame, and waved to them, then diverted her attention back to Thales.

She almost wanted him to get back up again. To get back up again so she could kill him again. She wished she could kill him for every death he’d caused. She wished she could kill him for every one of her siblings he’d taken from her.

But a thousand deaths wouldn’t be good enough for him. And it wouldn’t bring back anyone he’d taken from her or anyone else.

All she could do was sigh in relief, struggling not to burst into tears, as her friends rushed to the window.

Dimitri barely paid the glass any mind as he tried to squeeze his way through. Claude fruitlessly tried to grab him and hold him back. _“Hold up, Dima, you’ll get stuck! You’re not a mouse anymore!”_

“El, are you safe? Is he dead?” Dimitri asked, his shoulders stuck between the two sides of the window and blossoms of blood blackening his blue cape where the broken glass had dug into his flesh. He stared with wide eyes at Thales’ corpse, which lay facedown in a crumpled heap on the floor.

Edelgard swallowed a lump in her throat, but even then, the words wouldn’t come. She shakily nodded and wiped the blood from her throat.

 _“El, are you okay?”_ Bernadetta called out from behind him. _“Is your uncle dead? Did we get him?”_

“We got him,” Dimitri said, looking down at the arrow buried in Thales’ brain. His chest heaved as he let out a relieved sigh. “Between my strength and your sharp eyes, Bernadetta… we have won.”

 _“Alright!”_ Bernadetta crowed. _“Look at me now, dad! Look at Bernie now!_ Uh, I-I mean, um… s-sorry.”

“Where’s Hubert?” Edelgard asked, looking past Dimitri’s bulk through the window. “Bernie, what are you doing here?”

“Hubert’s keeping an eye on Kronya,” Claude said. “Said he couldn’t get too close to Arundel anyway, or else he might sense his presence and suspect something. So instead, I enlisted the best damn archer in Garreg Mach as my backup.”

Bernadetta sighed. “El, you said you wouldn’t do this again.”

“I know,” Edelgard said. “I’m sorry. Thank you for coming to my rescue again, Bernie.”

“I think I’m stuck,” Dimitri noted, frowning as he squirmed and tried to pull himself all the way through the window.

Claude sighed. “Of course you are.”

 _“What in the Goddess’ name is going on here?!”_ Seteth’s voice rang out, and Dimitri found himself rudely yanked out of the window. “Are those bows and arrows? Dimitri, Claude, _you two_ of all people should know that _real_ weapons belong in the training—”

His eyes met Edelgard’s through the window. Edelgard looked down at Thales’ body. So did Seteth. Worry creased his face. “What,” he gasped, “have you children _done?”_ While one hand clutched Dimitri by the scruff of his neck, the other clenched into a trembling fist. “Is that _Lord Arundel?_ You four are going to explain to me _right now_ why the Imperial Regent is lying in a pool of his own blood—”

Edelgard felt her legs give out and a surprised cry tore itself from her aching throat as she crumpled to the floor. She could feel a dull, throbbing burn in her very bones grow stronger by the second; her stomach twisted itself into knots and struggled to heave its way up her throat and out of her mouth. Her head pounded; her vision blurred and doubled, and when the world came back into focus, she looked down at her left hand and saw sharp claws protruding from ragged holes at each fingertip of her white silk glove. A sequence of sharp pains blossomed down her spine.

_No._

_Not again._

_“El!”_ Bernadetta cried out. _“El, what’s wrong?”_

Thales very weakly lifted his head. His false face had burned away, revealing the corpse-pale flesh of his true visage. Burn marks splayed out from his nose across that pallid skin where Edelgard’s hand had struck him in a starburst pattern, charred black in some parts and blistered in others. His eyes were wide and milky white all the way through, sans iris, sans pupil. This was the face that haunted Edelgard’s nightmares the most, and often her waking moments as well.

A normal human would have died instantly from a wound like the one in his throat.

Thales was not a normal human.

His mouth cracked open and his tongue darted out to lick wormy, corpse-blue lips. _“E… del… gard…”_ he gurgled, blood spurting from the wound in his neck and bubbling up from his mouth with each syllable. _“I… was only bluffing… about how… delayed… the poison’s effect… would be…”_

Then he noticed Seteth and looked up at him, staring with blank eyes. _“Cichol…”_ He let out a bubbling, choking laugh. _“Does… little Cethleann… still have nightmares… about us…?”_

Seteth stared down at him through the window, terror-stricken. His shoulders were quaking, his open mouth contorted in a fearful grimace. The only time Edelgard had seen him more frightened was when Flayn had gone missing.

“Children, run!” he called back to Dimitri, Claude, and Bernadetta, his voice shaking and strained. “Summon the archbishop and the knights at once!”

Thales sat up, propping himself against the room’s bare stone wall. A wicked, toothsome grin stained crimson with blood split his face.

And then that grin disappeared. Pain wracked his bloodied face. He convulsed. Whiskers began to sprout from his cheeks, claws ripping themselves free of his fingertips. _“What?!”_ he snarled, mortified, looking down at himself as his coat suddenly seemed to hang looser over his shoulders than before. _“But—But I—No!”_

Frantically fishing through his coat as the transformation slowly ran its course, white fur sprouting over white skin, he produced his flask and popped the cap off of it with fumbling fingers, then lifted it over his head and poured it all over himself. _“Edelgard—you will never get to enjoy your victory!”_

 _“No!”_ Edelgard screamed, throwing herself at him with all her strength even as her bones melted and her muscles tore themselves apart. Her feet slipped from her boots; her shoulders swam in her blouse; her cape enveloped her and the tips of her gloves, now empty, drooped from her fingertips; but if she could just get only one drop for herself…

She reached him, barely aware of the glass and ceramic digging into her flesh as fresh blossoms of pain exploded in every joint in her body, and ripped the little flask from his hand, overturning it above her open mouth in the hopes that something, _anything_ would come out, anything to stop this transformation before it could run its course again.

Thales’ mouth contorted into a pained grin, and he tore Dimitri’s dagger free of his throat and thrust it at her with the last of his strength.

Edelgard felt the blade dig deep between her ribs, and then she felt nothing at all.

* * *

A shaft of sunlight cut across her face, stinging her eyes. The bloody light bled through her closed eyelids, rousing her awake. A sweet song was drifting through the air, hummed gently by a soft, yet strong voice. A fragment of a long-forgotten memory drifted through her head—her first coherent thought since waking. Seeing the Mittelfrank Opera Company perform in the opera house in Enbarr with her uncle. She could have listened to the heroine’s aria a thousand more times, but the very next day, she had left for Fhirdiad. Had her Uncle Volkhard already been replaced by Thales at that point, or had the smile on his face when she had walked out of the theater humming that same aria been genuine?

Edelgard cracked open her eyes. The blurs that greeted her sharpened into the ceiling of the infirmary. She was lying on a cot and stripped down to nothing but a thin chemise, the air cold against her bare arms and legs. Her throat was dry; her tongue cleaved to the roof of her mouth. A sharp pain blossomed between two of her ribs on her left side; her right hand stung and throbbed to the beat of her heart.

She looked around. The infirmary was a mess; the tables were piled high with medical equipment and literature in disorganized heaps and papers littered the floor. If she hadn’t known any better, she’d say the place had been ransacked, or perhaps that a tornado localized entirely within this room had struck, but Professor Manuela, the academy’s resident physician, was a notorious slob—especially when she had just been dumped.

Professor Manuela was sitting on a chair not too far from her, watching her like a hawk. A loose ermine shawl hung over her bare shoulders and draped itself over the _exceptionally_ revealing dress that clung to her like a second skin. She had been Dorothea’s mentor over the course of her adolescent opera career, and the resemblance was obvious at a glance: They were both incredibly well… endowed.

Edelgard forced her dry, glued-shut lips to part. _“Water,”_ she croaked.

Manuela shot to her feet and went to her desk, filling a cup from a glass pitcher and carrying it to her side. She held it to Edelgard’s lips and gently tilted it just enough for the water to trickle into her mouth. “Good morning, Edelgard. So that makes two of us those dastards have stabbed in the gut,” she said. “How are you feeling?”

Edelgard kept drinking until there was no water left in the cup. She wasn’t sure why every physician in the world seemed to have picked up the habit of asking patients questions when they weren’t able to answer.

Finally, she answered, her voice slightly less of a rasp, “Did you remove the dagger?”

Manuela laughed and set the cup down on the bedside table. “Yes, I removed the dagger, you royal smartass. Any other questions?”

“Was that _Aria di Mezzo Carattere_ you were humming?”

“Why, yes.” She looked taken aback and just a little embarrassed. “You’ve got a good ear for opera. That was a pretty obscure one.”

“I saw it once when I was a little girl,” Edelgard said, “with my… well… I don’t know if he was really my uncle back then.”

“Oh.” Manuela glanced away and bit her lip. “The… creepy pale man who… stabbed you while… wearing your uncle’s skin… like a suit. I see. Perhaps I can hum something else?”

“It’s nothing. Is he dead? Or did he get away?”

An uncomfortable look crossed Manuela’s beautiful face, a worried crinkle of the crow’s-feet at the corners of her eyes.

Fear seized Edelgard’s heart. _“Is he still out there?”_ she hissed, struggling in a panic to force herself upright. Her right hand screamed when she pressed it against her cot to prop herself up, and she would have collapsed to the floor if Manuela hadn’t rushed to her side to stop her and force her back down into the cot.

“Easy there. It’s alright, Edelgard. According to Seteth, he tried to cast a warp spell after he stabbed you, but it, well…” Another pang of discomfort tugged at Manuela’s features as her complexion took a turn for the pallid. “That arrow was lodged pretty deep in his brain, so it was no wonder he couldn’t think straight…”

“What happened?”

“His warp spell only worked on half of him. The _outer_ half. We found his clothes, skin, and some scraps of muscle and tendon lying in a heap just outside the monastery walls. If it’s any consolation, death was probably instantaneous.”

“It isn’t,” Edelgard said. “He should have died slowly.”

Manuela gave her a sympathetic look and patted her on the shoulder. “Say no more, darling. I understand. If you ever need someone to talk to—” She leaned in. _“Or to drink with—”_ she added in a hushed whisper, “my office is always open.”

“You have my gratitude.” Edelgard raised her arms and looked at her hands. The left hand didn’t look much like a mouse’s paw, thankfully. Her right hand was cocooned in a thick and heavy mitten of gauze, and the burn on her palm stung. “This may be a bizarre question, Professor, but am I… completely human?”

Manuela cocked her head. “Why would you be anything else, darling?”

“The tea—it was poisoned. _Polymorphus muridae._ He poisoned the both of us and took the antidote, all of the antidote, and I—I could feel myself changing already by the time he stabbed me…”

“Oh. You don’t have whiskers and a tail, if that’s what you mean.”

Edelgard sighed with relief. The swelling of her lungs made her wound hurt. “H-How?”

“I’m not too sure myself,” Manuela confessed. “After all, Hanneman took a look at that flask and there was nothing inside but ordinary water.”

“But… but then…” Edelgard didn’t understand. If there had never been an antidote, then why was she still human? “I… I don’t understand.”

“Neither does anyone else. From what Seteth could see, the changes simply reversed themselves on their own while he was keeping you from bleeding out.” Manuela gazed up thoughtfully at the ceiling. “Either you’ve built up some kind of immunity to polymorphic magic, or the Goddess _really_ likes you, Edelgard.”

“Oh.” Either answer felt equally unsatisfying to Edelgard. “Where are Hubert and Bernie? I need to see them.”

Manuela smiled and patted her on the shoulder again. “Your professor and your whole class are practically lined up in front of the door to see you. And Dimitri and Claude, too. You want me to let ‘em all in at once, or…”

“Just Hubert and Bernie for now.”

“Alright.” Manuela took Edelgard’s cup and filled it again, then headed for the door. “Don’t strain yourself too hard; that was a _very_ deep wound and it was a bit too close to your heart for comfort. And now that you aren’t mouse-sized, it takes _work_ to heal you.”

“Yes, Professor.” As soon as Manuela left, a strained sob forced its way through her, wracking her chest and sticking in her throat on its way out, and when she choked it out, she wiped away the tears welling up in her eyes.

She slumped back and let her head sink into her pillow. Now, finally, it was all over.

 _“Psst. Hey!”_ a familiar voice squeaked in her ear. She would have shot up to her feet from the shock if she were strong enough to sit up, let alone stand. _“Hey, Edelgard!”_

She turned her head in the direction of the tiny squeak and found herself staring at a little brown mouse standing on the edge of her pillow. He was wearing a neat white tunic and had a tiny sword sheathed at his hip.

“Hi!” The mouse waved his paw. “Your old pal Mattie, back at it again!”

“What—” Edelgard’s eyes narrowed. A cold lump hardened her heart. “What did you do, Matthias? Aren’t you rebuilding your society?”

“Well, the thing is, I had some downtime and thought I’d, y’know, check in on you a bit, see how you’re doing—glad you’re human again, by the way—and just before I was going to head back home, I saw you and your friends plotting something. So I listened in a bit, followed that Jeritza guy when you sent him away, and we got to talking and I decided I’d help him out. When we found Thales or whatever his name was, I saw a little flask in his coat and got nervous, because you know that flasks and vials and stuff have been pretty bad news for you over the past month or so—again, I’m really sorry about that whole situation. So while Jeritza was heading back to report to you, I took my canteen, poured a little bit of the flask’s contents into it, and dumped the rest out onto the grass outside. Filled it up with water, set it back, you know the rest.”

Edelgard almost wanted to laugh.

“And then I sorta waited patiently through your whole conversation with that guy, and, well, I knew I had to do something.” Matthias shrugged. “I hope this makes up for everything between us.”

“I think we’re even, Matthias,” she told him. “You’ve… matured, since we first met.”

“Well, I was only eleven months old back then,” Matthias scoffed, putting his paws on his hips. “So young. So immature. So naive. And now I’m a full year old, with all the wisdom and experience that middle age offers.”

Edelgard laughed. “Thank you, Matthias. I’m glad I can depend on you.”

Matthias bowed. “You honor me, Your Highness.”

The door to the infirmary swung open, and as Hubert walked through with Bernadetta hiding behind him, Matthias scampered off the cot and vanished into a crack in the wall.

* * *

It was a cold, gloomy night, and the light rain that had fallen earlier in the afternoon had become a gentle and sparse snowfall, so the gentle pattering against the window that had filled Bernadetta’s room all day had ceased. There was no sound to be heard aside from the sound of needles slipping quietly through thread. Bernadetta was working late. She stifled a yawn as she ran a red thread through a ragged patch of red silk. She knew she had to rest, but she was so close to finishing, and Edelgard would be so excited when she showed it off to her tomorrow!

She finished the last bit of detailing, then stuffed the little doll with cotton and sewed the little cavity on its back shut. Her head and eyes aching from weariness, she stood up and set the doll down on her desk to observe it in the lamplight.

It was a stuffed felt doll standing roughly three inches tall, with stumpy arms and legs and a sharp, short, triangular snout and round, flared-out ears. Its head, mane, torso, and limbs were made from white felt and stuffed with cotton; its paws, the insides of its big ears, the tip of its snout, and the long, thin tail that curled around its feet were made from pink felt; short lengths of stiff, waxed white thread made its whiskers and the smallest buttons Bernadetta could find, the wood painted lavender and lacquered, marked its little eyes. A bit of embroidered pink thread formed a little smile on its face, and a cloak of tattered and singed old silk, red as blood and dotted with ragged holes, was sewn onto its shoulders.

Bernadetta looked down at the once-life-sized effigy of Edelgard. Her face fell. A pit formed in her stomach. Part of her wanted to cry.

It looked _terrible._ She looked from it to her other dolls and tried to put her finger on what she’d done wrong. The stitches were straight, the ears and shoulders were symmetrical, the eyes weren’t uneven, but it just looked… _bad._ Maybe the eyes were too small? Maybe the smile wasn’t right? Maybe she’d stuffed the doll’s tummy with too much cotton?

It was the latter, wasn’t it? She’d made Edelgard _fat!_ There was no way she could show this off to—

Someone knocked gently on her door, and Bernadetta nearly screamed from surprise. _“Bernie?”_ Edelgard’s voice, muffled by the door, softly called out. _“Bernie, are you awake?”_

“No?” Bernadetta called back before she could stop herself.

Shit.

 _“Is something wrong?”_ Edelgard asked.

“No, I’m fine. Is something—uh, I-I mean, why are you knocking on my door in the middle of the night?”

_“May I come in?”_

Bernadetta inched toward the door. “I-Is something wrong?”

Edelgard was silent for a while.

 _“Just a little,”_ she finally said.

Bernadetta let the door open just a crack. Edelgard was standing outside wearing a hastily thrown-on cloak over nothing else but a nightgown, her hair mussed and messy, her eyes just a touch bloodshot. A light dusting of snow had fallen on her shoulders and she was, of course, shivering. Bernadetta let the door swing open the rest of the way and stepped back to let her through.

“Thank you, Bernie,” Edelgard said, brushing flecks of snow off her shoulders and shrugging out of her cloak. The gauzy mitten her burned right hand had been ensconced in last week had given way to a lighter layer of bandages wrapped over her palm. “I’ve been having trouble sleeping and this isn’t the best evening for a pleasant walk.” She rubbed at her eyes. “What are you doing up at this hour?”

Bernadetta made sure to position herself between Edelgard and the desk. “Um… nothing, just working on another doll—I-I mean, another dull assignment…”

“Can I help?”

“No, no! That’s fine! I was actually just finishing up. I’m done, actually. I finished a while ago.”

Edelgard yawned. “I must be well-rested for tomorrow. I’m taking a certification exam to be a dark mage. Hubert and Lysithea are so proud of me…” With a resigned, weary smile, she loped over to Bernadetta’s bed and sank into it, curling up under the thick and fluffy duvet these winter months demanded. “Why does your bed feel nicer than mine?”

“I-I dunno. We should have the same mattresses, not a-accounting for, um, those n-nice sheets your father—um, the emperor—sent to you…”

“Maybe you should come to my room tomorrow night,” Edelgard mumbled, “and we can… do a comparison test.”

“Um… y-yeah, okay,” Bernadetta stammered, her heart doing somersaults in her chest. Now she just had to stuff her failed project into a drawer where Edelgard would never see it, and then she could burrow into bed with her. She never slept more soundly than when Edelgard was at her side.

If she were being honest, though, it surprised her that Edelgard still wanted to spend the night with her; she’d half expected her to go right back to being her usual solitary self after the whole mouse thing had been resolved. And for the most part, in the week or so since she’d been discharged from the infirmary, she _had._ Both of them had. Without the whole mouse thing weighing on Edelgard’s mind so heavily and immediately, Bernadetta had almost expected her to quietly pretend to forget about all the cuddling and snuggling and other intimacies. But here Edelgard was again. In her room.

Edelgard lifted her head off the pillow. “What’s that?” she asked, suddenly alert again.

“What’s what?”

“That thing on your desk.” She sat up.

“W-What thing on my desk?” Bernadetta asked, feeling hot shame paint her cheeks scarlet. “There’s nothing on my desk!”

Edelgard leaned closer. “Is it a doll?”

“No!”

_“Is that my old cloak?”_

“U-Uh…”

She slipped back out of bed and made her way to the desk, a bright and alert gleam in her eyes. “I _knew_ you would do something amazing with it—”

Bernadetta threw herself in front of her. “No, it’s not—”

“Oh, Bernie…” Edelgard weaved around her and scooped the doll off the desk, cradling it in her hands.

“I-It’s terrible, I know, I’m sorry I did that to your old cape after you trusted me to do something special with it,” Bernadetta squawked, “b-b-but I can fix it! I’ll fix it, I’ll pull out the stitching a-and redo it and make it better—”

“It’s perfect,” Edelgard said.

Bernadetta swallowed a lump in her throat. “Um… wh-what?”

“It’s perfect,” she repeated. She tapped on the doll’s eyes with her fingernail. “Where did you find buttons in this color? They match my eyes perfectly!”

“A-Actually, I painted them and coated them in lacquer…”

“Was I really _this_ cute?”

“Oh, stop.”

“It’s wonderful. I mean it.” Edelgard gave the doll a gentle squeeze. Bernadetta half expected all the stitching to come undone and let cotton spew all over the place. “But it’s missing something.”

“I know. It’s terrible. But I just don’t know what’s wrong…”

“I’ll tell you what’s wrong, Bernie. It’s missing _you.”_ Edelgard held the doll up by its forepaws and gave it an experimental wiggle. “I wouldn’t have made it a week with my sanity intact if you hadn’t been with me. _She_ needs her Bernie-Bear, too.”

“You… w-want me to make another one?”

“Yes. Exactly.” She tucked the doll under her arm, then stifled another mighty yawn. “I can hardly believe I—used to be afraid of these things… I suppose they’re much cuter when they’re made out of felt, though. Ah, Bernie, I’m tired. Are you ready for bed?”

Bernadetta looked down at her nightgown. “Um… yes?”

“I won’t keep you, then.” Edelgard crawled into her bed, still clutching the little doll of herself to her chest, and her eyes all but snapped shut as soon as her head hit the pillow.

“Okay then,” Bernadetta said to herself, dimming the lamp and making her way back to her bed. She stood over it and looked down at Edelgard, looked at the way the dull amber lamplight flickered on her pale skin and silky hair, looked at the way her lips curved in a placid half-smile, and saw something she’d never seen before. Something she couldn’t put her finger on, something subtle; something that made her feel all warm and tingly from head to toe and also made her certain that Edelgard was the most beautiful girl in the world.

Edelgard cracked open one eye. “Is something wrong, Bernie?”

“Oh, um—j-just that we’ve never done this before as, uh—I-I mean, the last time we did this we were, uh, mice. Okay… here goes…”

She crawled into bed after Edelgard, drew up the sheets around both of them, and settled in for the night underneath the thick, soft warmth of the duvet draped over the bed. Her heavy eyelids threatened to close as soon as the back of her head met her pillow.

Edelgard curled around her, resting her cheek on her shoulder and slinging one arm lazily across her chest. Her breath ghosted across her neck. In return, Bernadetta let one hand rest on Edelgard’s side, feeling the bandages that ran around her torso just beneath her chest through the thin silk of her nightgown. The two of them just barely fit on the bed, which had definitely been made for one person. It was all so different from before… but not in an unpleasant way.

“And to think,” Edelgard mumbled sleepily, her words becoming more slurred by the second, “the last time I slept in your bedroom, we could have just shared the bed.”

“It’s a little cramped, though.”

“That has its advantages.”

Bernadetta idly slipped her hand down Edelgard’s hip and found it resting on her bare thigh, slipping across one of the thin surgical scars that crossed her body like a seam. Edelgard shivered and drew closer. “I love your skin,” she mumbled, realizing as soon as the words left her mouth that she’d made a horrible mistake. “I-I mean, I—y-you’ve had fur all this while and that was nice, too—y-your fur was really soft and silky and I loved it, but your skin is soft, too, and, um—ugh, shut up, Bernie, you’re making yourself sound like a pervert or something—”

“I love your skin, too,” Edelgard said. Her lips briefly connected with the side of Bernadetta’s neck; Bernadetta felt every nerve in her body light up at once.

“Okay,” Bernadetta mumbled back, dumbstruck.

Edelgard snuggled closer to her. “Lysithea’s running me ragged,” she confessed, stifling another yawn. “She works so hard to master things as quickly as possible… and since we’re the same… well… and to think Dimitri said _I_ was a strict instructor… he can’t even imagine…” Her hand caressed Bernadetta’s side, almost tickling her. “Don’t let her tutor you in anything, Bernie. If she wants to teach you magic, run.” A sleepy little laugh bubbled out of her mouth.

Bernadetta was so flustered she could hardly think straight. It was like fog on a window, except the window was her brain and the fog was the way it felt for Edelgard’s fingertips to slip across the fabric of her nightgown and stroke her skin underneath.

“Um… A-After the exam, do you want to go to the greenhouse?” she asked her once she’d regained her composure.

“Perhaps. If I do not faint immediately afterward.”

“I’ve got a succulent growing there.”

“What’s a succulent?”

“It’s a desert plant. It doesn’t need much water. Actually, if you give it too much water, it’ll die. It’s a little weird-shaped and spiny, and its skin is really thick and tough, and some of them have spikes to keep people away, but it’s got soft flesh inside where it stores up all the water it needs. You can just let it be for weeks and it’ll still be there for you like you were never gone. Sorry, I know… first pitcher plants, now succulents, Bernie, can’t you just pick a _normal_ flower to be interested in?”

“They sound familiar,” Edelgard said. Bernadetta felt her hand slip into her hair. “Are we a couple of succulents, Bernie?”

“You’re not weird-shaped or spiny.”

“Neither are you.” Edelgard kept stroking her hair. Bernadetta shivered pleasantly. There the fog was again, beating back all of the thoughts she could think except for maybe _Edelgard soft._ “I’d love to see your succulent, Bernie.”

Nevertheless, Bernadetta kept running her mouth, as though it were a runaway horse dragging a carriage behind it, barely even thinking about it. “It sounds like a good kind of plant for an emperor to have,” she said. “Since you’ll be too busy to take care of normal flowers with all your, um, emperor stuff. All you need to know is it doesn’t mind if the soil’s dry, and you only need to water it every couple of weeks or so, or maybe once a month. I put up a sign in the greenhouse in front of Bernie Junior—oh, yeah, that’s right, I named it ‘Bernie Junior’—that says, ‘I’m Bernie Junior, property of Bernadetta von Varley, and I’m a succulent, so please, please, please, please, please don’t water me or I’ll die,’ because I’m really afraid that someone who likes gardening but doesn’t understand succulents might come in and…”

Edelgard started to laugh.

Bernadetta felt her heart wrench. “Ah, I guess it’s… pretty stupid, isn’t it?”

“No, no, just… I just recalled the first time we slept in a proper bed together, and I spent the whole time listing my grievances against the world,” Edelgard said. “I feel I have so much in common with you, Bernie, except that my idea of pillow talk is ranting about such dour and serious tirades… and yours is regaling me about cute little plants. I think I’ll leave the talking to you from now on, as you seem to be much better at it.”

Bernadetta blushed. “I can talk more about Bernie Junior, I guess…”

“No, I think you need a break.”

“Oh, so are you going to talk about Cre—”

Edelgard’s lips pressed against hers. She couldn’t breathe, but at that moment, she didn’t _want_ to. Edelgard exhaled through her nose, her breath tickling Bernadetta’s cheek, and that reminded Bernadetta that she _could_ breathe, she’d just forgotten she needed to. Edelgard leaned into her, her fingers curling around her shoulder, and Bernadetta felt a tongue that wasn’t hers brush against her teeth.

What was she supposed to do here? She’d only read about this in romance stories, and those stories never mentioned anything about _tongues,_ and she usually preferred adventure stories to romances anyway—

After what felt like an eternity, Edelgard pulled away, leaving Bernadetta feeling strangely hungry and shivering despite how warm she was. “I, um… just had an idea. Could you make another doll of me? I’ll gladly compensate you for the supplies.”

Dumbstruck yet again and feeling as though she were hovering a couple feet outside of her body, Bernadetta shakily nodded.

“Thank you,” Edelgard said. “Can you make it fancier, too?”

“Fancier like… what?”

“Maybe you could… give it a nice cape, gold trim on the edges, and an imperial insignia embroidered on the back… maybe an axe made out of felt it can hold in its paw…”

“That might be a little hard,” Bernadetta said, “but… I guess I could try. I could use the Adrestian banner in our classroom as a guide and make a cape that looks like that. A-And maybe I could make a little plush axe if I used lengths of wire or metal rods to keep the structure rigid. So why do you want a second doll anyway…?”

She trailed off when she realized that Edelgard’s hand had fallen limply away from her hair and onto her cheek. The rise and fall of her chest and the slow and placid rhythm of her breath dancing across Bernadetta’s skin made it clear that she had fallen fast asleep.

“Good night, El,” Bernadetta whispered, brushing an errant wisp of white hair away from her brow and daring to plant a kiss on her forehead. “Sleep well.”

“I love you, Bernie,” Edelgard mumbled, her words so slurred and whispered so softly they were just barely intelligible.

“I love you, too, El,” Bernadetta mumbled back as she settled deeper into Edelgard’s embrace and let sleep carry her away.

* * *

Enbarr did not have the rough winters of Fhirdiad, as its climate was tempered by the breeze from the nearby sea, but it was always the month of the Red Wolf Moon when the cold first began to seep into Emperor Ionius IX’s aching knuckles and wrists. Always the knuckles and wrists first. Then up the arms and into the chest and down the back… and although he was bedridden and his blankets were thick and luxurious, leaving his waist and legs quite insulated, the cold always found his toes. It was strange how, as one aged, the warmth so easily left one’s body…

“Terrible news, Your Majesty,” Ionius’ servant told him, bowing his head as he stood sharply at attention before the foot of the imperial four-poster bed. “The Imperial Regent, Lord Volkhard von Arundel, was found mauled to death by demonic beasts on his way back to Enbarr from Garreg Mach. The Knights of Seiros say there was not enough left of him for a proper funeral. He has already been cremated.”

“Oh dear… what a grisly fate,” Ionius said, shaking his head. Secretly, he was rather glad. That conniving dastard had been nothing but trouble from the day he’d kidnapped dear Anselma and precious little El, to say nothing of his toadying to that monstrous Ludwig von Aegir, and whatever brain-numbing concoction he kept putting in his soup wasn’t half as strong as he thought it was (though Ionius did like to keep up appearances). “That is truly terrible. He was like a brother to me, and so faithful…”

“Yes, the Empire shall mourn his loss.” The servant bowed. “We have also received a package from Garreg Mach.”

“His ashes, I presume?”

“Yes, but Your Majesty has also received a separate package from Her Highness, Princess Edelgard.”

Ionius’ spirits lifted further, and he made no effort to hide it this time. His El, his darling little El, his last remnant of his family, the only survivor of that butchery beneath the palace… how he loved hearing from her! And not merely her usual letter, but a whole package? What could she have to say? He leaned forward, his old joints creaking, a grin splitting his tired old face. “Bring it to me at once!”

The servant nodded hastily and scampered off like a mouse running from an angry cook with a butcher’s knife. Ionius smiled inwardly. Still intimidating, to _some_ people at least, after all these years and indignities had done to him.

As he waited, though, a violent coughing fit wracked his body, so strong he felt as though his chest would explode and his ribs shoot across the room like arrows and javelins. This, too, came with the cold, though he could swear the fits grew worse with every passing winter. By the end of the month, perhaps sooner, he would be coughing up so much phlegm that he would drown in it.

He was fortunate that his fit subsided before the servant returned and laid a small box on his lap, gingerly cracking it open. Inside was a curious little stuffed doll—a tiny white mouse, no less than three inches tall, wearing a splendid little red cape emblazoned with the Adrestian insignia and holding a little plush axe—and one of Edelgard’s usual letters penned in her strong, elegant, yet cramped handwriting. He grasped the letter first in his hands and cracked its wax seal, his fingertips slipping over the unfolding paper as his rheumatic hands trembled in anticipation.

Thank Sothis his eyes were still sharp as an eagle’s after all these years; Edelgard’s neat penmanship already fit as many words into as small an area as possible _before_ she had been turned into a mouse; no matter how much paper she had, she wrote as though she were running out of space. He imagined the sight of her scratching on the paper with a quill pen as tall as she was and had to suppress a guilty chuckle.

_Dearest Father,_

_I am writing this letter to you from the Officer’s Academy at Garreg Mach and hoping it finds you well. My heart yearns to return to Enbarr and see you again. In the meantime, perhaps this gift I have sent along to you will make up in some small way for my current absence._

_I am happy to report, as I hope you have heard by now, that I am alive and well. The rumors that I and roughly a dozen other noble children were transformed into mice in what I have taken to calling ‘the mouse incident’ are no longer true, much to our collective relief, and we are all in the highest of spirits._

_Enclosed is a doll hand-stitched by a very good friend of mine from the Officer’s Academy. While some artistic liberties have been taken, I can say with certainty that it is a very good likeness of myself over the course of the mouse incident. Perhaps, should I be successful in coaxing her out of her room, the friend responsible for sewing this doll will come with me to visit you. If I am able to bring her along, please do not let her know that I gave the doll to you, as she is painfully humble and has terrible anxiety; she would surely faint on the spot were she to know that her work has been seen by the Emperor of Adrestia._

_Aside from the mouse incident, my time at Garreg Mach has been wonderful. I have made many new friends, especially as of late. In particular, you will also be proud to know that I have already begun to form strategic alliances with Claude von Riegan of the Leicester Alliance and Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd of the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus—both of whom I have learned many surprising things about as of late._

_I am also working on cultivating other alliances that will allow me to make things right upon my ascension to the throne, though I cannot safely mention the details in writing. I hope to relieve you of this burden soon so that you may live out the rest of your days in the peace and comfort you so richly deserve. I have more to say about that, but it will have to wait until we may speak in person and in private. In particular, I have much to tell you about my uncle Volkhard, who has—I regret to inform you—tragically passed away. They say there is not enough of his body left for a proper interment, but I hope his soul has found peace in the Goddess nonetheless._

_Mere words cannot express how deeply I love and miss you, Father, nor how much I wish to embrace you and see the smile on your face. My departure for Enbarr cannot come soon enough; I have such a tale to tell you when next we meet._

_Your loving daughter,_

_El_

_P.S. I promised my professor’s father a gift from the palace’s cellar in return for his helpfulness during the mouse incident. Please have a cask of our finest gin sent to Captain Jeralt Eisner of the Knights of Seiros at Garreg Mach Monastery. I promise I have no duplicitous reasons for requesting this._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for reading this weird, wild ride of a fanfic! I had so much fun writing this and reading all your comments as the story grew and developed. Some of you might be sad that it's over, but instead, you should be happy the story snowballed so much. It's about three times longer than I'd originally intended because I kept finding more opportunities/excuses to turn more students into mice, and welp, here we are, at the end of the longest and most epic Berniegard fic on Ao3 (hopefully, so far)! If you didn't ship it before, I hope you ship it now!
> 
> If you're still hankering for more mice-adventures, though, well... there's always the possibility of a sequel, just as soon as I contrive a way to turn El and Bernie back into mice... or maybe I'll try some other animals next time. How about cats? Or foxes? After all, Cornelia is still alive, and who knows what she could get up to if she escapes the Knights of Seiros' clutches...
> 
> Anyway stan berniegard


	15. Art Gallery

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Because today is Fancy Rat and Mouse Day (and we all have frayed nerves because of the election), I decided to put up a chapter to collect a all of the Mousegard art I've gotten so far! It's Free Serotonin

[Terry-Lynn Labbe](https://twitter.com/CTKitsune)

[Terry-Lynn Labbe](https://twitter.com/wmm_ebooks/status/1231683197076983809)

[Terry-Lynn Labbe](https://twitter.com/wmm_ebooks/status/1279893896517038081)

* * *

[sympolite](https://www.furaffinity.net/view/35977693/)

* * *

[Recurrent](https://twitter.com/RecurrentArt/status/1252649181883203584)

* * *

[Patrick Robinson](https://twitter.com/wmm_ebooks/status/1266391281426747393)

[Patrick Robinson](https://twitter.com/wmm_ebooks/status/1282722110000050177)

[Patrick Robinson](https://twitter.com/wmm_ebooks/status/1286341641012416512)

* * *

[GayZeraora](https://twitter.com/GayZeraora/status/1312929082473156610)

* * *

[Fauvfox](https://www.deviantart.com/fauvfox/art/COM-Mouse-Hero-856394262)

[Fauvfox](https://www.deviantart.com/fauvfox/art/COM-Mouse-Plush-861654965)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Another Adrestian Tail](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26750140) by [AMX004_Qubeley](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AMX004_Qubeley/pseuds/AMX004_Qubeley)




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